


We Will Stand

by LunaCatriona



Series: Black Water [5]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2019-08-29 10:13:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 27,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16742077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LunaCatriona/pseuds/LunaCatriona
Summary: "When the martyrs fall from the castle wall and menace clouds the air; when reason dies to the sound of lies, you'll be far away from there; so tell me that you'll hold me; stronger we will stand; I can see the day when we'll know the way; and we'll return to the land."- 'We Will Stand' by Tide Lines.Sometimes the women have to stand together and take control of the situation, whatever and whoever might block their way.Part five of Black Water.





	1. Dr. Mairead Beaton

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the fifth and final section of Black Water.

“The fuck did you just say?!” roared Malcolm.

Nicola stopped. Maybe the entire universe stopped; there was no way to know. Because everything kicked off. Malcolm lunged at Adam; Nicola threw herself between them, her hands pressing hard into her husband’s chest. “Malcolm, _no_!” she shouted in his face, but he didn’t seem to hear her. Every last ounce of her strength went into keeping his rage contained. “Euan, help me!” she demanded through gritted teeth. But he did not help. He left her to be the only thing between these two men and total carnage. “Fucking hell,” she growled under her breath. “Malcolm, look at me! Stop this. It’s not worth hurting anybody!”

“He fucking punched Euan!” Malcolm roared indignantly. “Called Bella-”

“I know what he said. Believe me, I fucking heard him. But what good will it do to hit him?”

“It’ll make me _feel_ better,” he snarled. He tried to dive around her, but she blocked his way. Nicola was conscious of Adam behind her and was sure he was antagonising Malcolm, doing nothing to make the situation any easier to defuse.

“Don’t be so daft!” she said earnestly. “Don’t descend to that level.” But he was not listening to her. The words weren’t getting through the mist of fury in front of him; he kept trying to get around her, to kick the fuck into Adam. “Euan, fucking hell, will you come and-”

She saw him. She didn’t know how she hadn’t seen him before. At the foot of the flight of stairs they had climbed to get into the pub lay Euan, blood pooling into a crimson puddle around his head and neck. Nicola ran to him, suddenly sober and aware and capable of being the leader. “Somebody phone for an ambulance!” shouted Nicola. The people gathered at the top of the stairs gazed at her vacantly, unleashing a sense of unbridled panic in the pit of her stomach. “ _Now_!”

Adam Crichton stared down at them, like he was only now realising what he had done. And yet, she found little in the way of remorse in his face – that was the expression of a man who knew he was in trouble and was trying to think of a way out of it.

A young woman hurtled down the stairs to them. “I’m a doctor,” she said. “I work in Broadford.” She was already on the phone, checking Euan for signs of life. “What’s his name? How old is he?”

“Euan Whyte,” Nicola said. “He’s thirty-five.”

“The MP’s husband?” she replied; Nicola gathered from her tone that she had some understanding of how Bella was known to react to incidents like these. Without waiting for an answer, she gently shook Euan’s shoulder. “Okay, Euan, my name’s Mairead Beaton, and I’m a doctor. Can you hear me?” There was no response; Euan’s still silence stabbed a knife of complete terror into Nicola’s chest.

Mairead started to talk to the emergency services, telling them that a man of thirty-five had fallen down a flight of steps in a pub, was unconscious and bleeding from the head, and was not responding to pain. She let them know she was a doctor at the memorial hospital in Broadford, and she listened to whatever was being said over the phone. She lifted his eyelids for a moment, one at a time. “I don’t have a light on me but I’d say both pupils are blown,” she said. From what little Nicola did know about medicine and the human body – outside of mental health and cancer – that was not good.

She ran back up the stairs to her husband. “I’m trying to get hold of Bella,” he told her. “She’s not answering the fucking phone.”

“What about the landline?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking retarded enough not to have tried the fucking house phone,” he snapped, his eyes looking to the ceiling. When he looked at her again, his face softened slightly. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Just getting-”

“I know,” Nicola assured him with a squeeze of his arm. “Try and stay calm. Bella’s going to need you.” Nicola almost added that she was going to need him, too, but reasoned that it was unfair to add further burdens to the massive one he was about to take on as his daughter’s father. “You stay here and I’ll get a taxi up to Bella. I’ll look after the kids and you two can go with Euan.”

Mairead beckoned Nicola back down to Euan. “An ambulance is on the way; they’ll take him to Broadford to try and stabilise him. From there they will take him to either Raigmore or Glasgow. All depends on his condition. I must warn you, though, it’s bad. Really bad.”

Nicola took that to translate as, “He could well die.” She did not let anyone see the fear that creeped up her throat to strangle her; instead, she nodded her head and went back to Malcolm. “He’s going to Broadford. Then either Inverness or Glasgow.”

Malcolm didn’t speak for a moment. Nicola could see his hesitation and his reluctance, the mind behind his eyes debating which of the unbelievably shit tasks he would vow to complete. “No,” he said slowly. “I should be the one to tell Bella. I’ll look after the kids. You stay with Euan. I’ll tell her to meet you at Broadford.”

“Why?”

“I just told you!”

It was true, he had just told her. The thing was, she wasn’t sure she entirely believed what he had told her. He knew she was just as able to keep Bella’s feet on the ground as he was, and just as able to stay behind and look after the children. She was arguably more suited to staying behind than he was; she knew he hated to be out of the picture. “What’s the real reason?” she asked in an undertone. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Malcolm, I know you too well.”

He looked at the floor. “Look, I can’t see him die. If it comes to it, and Bella’s not there, someone needs to be with him, and I can’t do it.”

She understood. Of course she did. He had seen his father dead, he had seen his wife just about dead more than once, he had seen Katie’s body because James did not accompany Nicola, and he had seen his stepson lying lifeless on the ground after a blow to the head. He was exhausted. “That’s all you had to say,” she told him gently. “There’s a taxi rank on the square.”

He nodded his head and kissed her goodbye. Watching as he stepped past Mairead and over Euan, she hoped to the skies and whoever may be up there that Euan pulled through. It wasn’t like they needed another blow. And her children had been through enough without losing Euan; they adored him for his lack of maturity and his stories of his own misguided youth.

Back at Euan’s side, she only half-listened to Mairead as she talked; she kept saying to Nicola that this was a serious head injury, that she should be prepared for him to be very poorly, that he might not even survive. How much of that Nicola took in, she wasn’t able to say. She heard it. She understood it. She just didn’t know if it soaked into her brain or if she was too much in shock.

At the top of the stairs, Adam looked on. He did not look horrified like his fellow pub-goers. He didn’t look like he was afraid for the life of the young father lying with blood pouring out of his head. No, Adam just looked sheepish. Like he knew exactly what he had done. Nicola could not say if he had intended to knock Euan down the stairs – only Adam could truthfully answer to that – but he had intended to hit Euan, and he had done so with venomous hatred fuelling his fist. That indifference was infuriating; the only reason she didn’t run up those stairs and break his jaw was that she had better control of her temper than her husband did. That she knew how to hold it back did not mean she wouldn’t gleefully rearrange his face if given the appropriate opportunity.

The world was suddenly tiny. It consisted of the front entrance to the pub, and of Nicola, Euan and Mairead. Maybe it was the claustrophobia kicking in, or maybe the universe really had contracted around her. She needed to be outside, breathing real air unpolluted by the stench of alcohol and blood, but she needed to be here, too, for she could not leave Euan.

“Come on,” Nicola urged him. She felt rather idiotic, talking to a man who likely could not hear her. “Don’t die on me.”

Mairead rushed around Nicola and beckoned a paramedic into the building. “Euan Whyte,” Mairead said, “thirty-five. Fell down the stairs during an altercation in the pub, by the look of it.”

“Who was he fighting?” the elder of the two paramedics asked.

“He wasn’t really fighting, as such,” Nicola explained. “His uncle punched him.”

“The uncle still here?”

“Yeah, he’s up there,” she replied, nodding in the direction of the stairs.

As the paramedics set to work with Euan, the younger one said, “Mairead, run across to the station and get the police over, would you?” Mairead nodded and set off down the street, towards Somerled Square. “There’s not much space here,” he continued, not unkindly, to Nicola. “Could you go and sit the uncle down until the police are here? They’re going to want a word with him.”

“Of course,” Nicola replied, though she could think of nothing worse to do in that moment than sit with Adam Crichton. Despite that, she went up the stairs and found Adam skulking behind worried and frightened onlookers; it dawned on Nicola that a lot of these people knew Euan and Bella. It was a small town on a small island.

She guided Adam backwards into the corner of the pub. “What’re you-”

“Sit down and shut up,” Nicola bit at him, pushing him back into a chair. “Are you clueless or do you just not fucking care at all?”

Nicola needed to know which it was. She needed to know whether Adam regretted the extent to which he had hurt Euan. “He’ll be fine!” Adam laughed incredulously. “He’s just tripped down the stairs and bumped his head.”

“He wouldn’t be at the bottom of the stairs if you hadn’t fucking hit him!” Nicola hissed. “And, no, Adam, he might not be _fine_!”

She stalked over to the bar and asked the boy behind it, “Can I have a glass of water, please?”

Nicola took the full glass from the barman and took it to Adam; she placed it down hard on the table in front of him. “Drink that and sober up,” she ordered him harshly. It was slightly unnerving to hear herself sound like her husband. She even muttered, “Twat,” under her breath as she stepped back from Adam and leaned against the wall.

Mairead appeared with two police officers. “This him?” asked Mairead.

“This is indeed _him_ ,” Nicola confirmed, unable to keep her distaste out of her voice. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to see what state my son-in-law is in.” However, as she passed, she pulled Mairead aside and said, “Thank you for looking after Euan.”

“You’re welcome,” Mairead said with a slight smile. “Go with him. Don’t let him be alone.”

Nicola hurried off down the stairs. The paramedics were loading Euan into the ambulance. “Are you coming with us?” asked the older paramedic.

“If it’s okay.”

“Yeah. Just stay in the seat over there,” he pointed to a chair at the side, far enough away from the trolley that it left enough room for the paramedic to manoeuvre. Nicola swallowed the stone in her throat; that was essentially the back of a van. Once she was in, there was no way out of that space.

She took a steadying breath and climbed in. Claustrophobia could not win out here. Euan needed her to be stronger than her phobia. There was so little she could do to help but be with Euan. Like Mairead had said, she could not let him be alone.

The doors slammed shut. The engine started. The ambulance moved. “I’m Murdo, by the way,” said the paramedic.

“Nicola,” she said.

“What’s the connection?” asked Murdo.

“I’m his stepmother-in-law.”

“Are you close?”

Nicola knew now that Murdo was trying to distract her from her surroundings. Was the anxiety and fear written so clearly in her face? “Quite close, yeah.” Before Murdo could continue his tactics, Nicola asked, “Where are we going?”

“We’re going to take him straight to Broadford. They’ll try and stabilise him there. After that, it all depends on how well he improves.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

Murdo turned to look at her solemnly. “It’s a bad blow to the head he’s had,” he said. “That’s the main concern, but they’ll have check what other damage he took in the fall. Try not to worry, alright? I know it’s easy for me to say, but you worrying doesn’t do anything to change the outcome.”


	2. Homeless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello!
> 
> I have to say thanks to Tereshkova for humouring my shit sense of humour, and helping keep me sane while my host mum is on nightshifts and the kids drive me to distraction!

Nicola would never have chosen this role for herself, for the very simple reason that she was not cut out for it. She didn’t think she’d even have chosen it for her worst enemy – what if nobody was supposed to be able to do this? It was such a surreal thing, to hear that monitor make that awful sound. To be trapped in the back of a van with that piercing death knell.

Murdo fought for Euan’s life. Nicola watched him put every last ounce of himself into keeping the boy in this world. She counted the chest compressions. She stared at the flat line on the monitor.

The walls crept towards her until, suddenly, she was crushed between them. They suffocated her while they killed Euan. They were going to kill her as well. She needed to get out of here. Beyond those locked doors was air, the very thing she needed in order to survive this trip.

All Nicola’s effort went into staying back and letting Murdo do his job, but never drifting so far that she felt Euan was on his own. “How far are we?” Murdo shouted to the front of the ambulance.

“We’re past Dunan. About five minutes!” called the second paramedic. “Maybe three!”

As Murdo’s hands pounded down onto Euan’s chest, Nicola heard him say, “For all that’s good and holy, don’t give in, lad!”

Euan had stopped breathing, but Nicola felt she wasn’t far behind him. Throttled by her fear and her entrapment in this ambulance, she could not find air. Even if she could find it, she doubted she would be able to breathe anyway; was this the claustrophobia or the catastrophe? She could no longer focus on what Murdo did to Euan – all she knew was he was trying not to let her son-in-law die.

She wanted to push Murdo out of the way and shake Euan back to life. She’d never watched someone die before. After all, she hadn’t known what happened to James until after the fact. Had Katie died like this? In the back of an ambulance? Completely unconscious? Or had she been awake? Scared and alone and confused and crying for her mum? And all the time Nicola had been in a Cabinet meeting. Story of Katie’s life: needed her mum, but her mum was busy in a meeting.

But this time she wasn’t. This time she had been the one to run down those stairs. This time, she was where she was needed, and still she was no good to anyone. She couldn’t think beyond the walls closing in on her. Shouldn’t she be helping? Shouldn’t she be _doing_ something?

And suddenly the ambulance stopped and the doors flew open. Nicola forced herself to stay put until Euan was outside, with both paramedics attending to him and hospital staff meeting them at the door.

When Nicola did step out of the ambulance, the air was thin. Dense, heavy, difficult to inhale, but lacking in oxygen. How was she supposed to breathe?

Her phone rang – it was Malcolm. “Hello?” she asked cautiously. What else could have gone wrong since they’d left?

“Bella’s on her way. Left about quarter of an hour ago but the speed limits probably look more like fucking targets to her,” he explained. “How is he?”

“I don’t know,” she heard herself say.

“What do you mean, you don’t fucking know? Is he alive?”

“I don’t know, Malcolm!” she shouted at him; the entire universe had collapsed onto her chest and all he could do was ask her fucking questions. “We just got to Broadford but something went wrong on the way and the machine was going full bore and they were doing chest compressions and-”

“Sshh,” Malcolm hushed her. “It’s okay, Nicola.”

“Whatever this is, it’s not fucking okay!” She heard the shrillness in her own voice, and it frightened her beyond belief.

“Breathe out,” he reminded her. “You’re going into a panic attack; I can hear it from Portree!” And was he right. Nicola was in the middle of a panic attack. “Whatever happens, Nicola, you will be okay.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about!”

“I know that!” he answered her. “I know you’re worried – so am I – but you can do this. Whatever happens, you can be okay and you can be there for them, just like I’m here for the kids.”

That reminder of proportion and perspective did something to calm Malcolm; she was not in danger. Her children needed her, and they needed her with her feet on the ground and her head on her shoulders. “Okay,” she said as she exhaled. “Okay, I’m going into the hospital now.”

“Alright. I love you.”

“Love you too,” she said; she hung up.

Through clouds of midges, she walked slowly into the hospital. “I’m Euan Whyte’s mother-in-law,” she said to the first member of staff she found – a doctor in his late forties.

“Follow me,” he said. “You’re Nicola, right?” Nicola nodded her head. “Murdo said you were with them in the ambulance. “I’m afraid it isn’t good.”

“He was okay,” Nicola murmured. “He was fine and then down he went.”

“These things happen so fast,” the doctor said compassionately. He led her to a room off the unit and gestured for her to sit down. “Can I get you anything? Water, maybe?” Nicola shook her head.

“Can I see Euan?” she asked. She had intended to stat with him but didn’t want to hinder the medics.

The doctor sat down in the chair next to her. “Nicola,” he said gently. She knew that tone. She knew what happened when people used that very specific brand of cautious sympathy. “Euan didn’t make it. He stopped breathing in the ambulance – we couldn’t get him back. I’m so sorry.”

Nicola leaned forwards and put her face in her hands. How could he be dead? How could he, a thirty-five-year-old father of two, just be gone? Why did people die so young? Katie, Malcolm’s dad, James, now Euan…how was this fair?

“But he was fine,” she said again. “He was walking away – he didn’t even throw a punch. He was on his best behaviour.”

“What exactly happened?”

“His uncle was being a racist moron,” Nicola said. “Euan didn’t want a fight. He said his bit and walked away. Adam grabbed him and hit him. I was so preoccupied with making sure my husband didn’t start fighting Adam, none of us realised what had happened until it was too late.” She lifted her head. “I should have noticed.”

“You did everything in your power for him.”

“I need some air,” Nicola said abruptly. She felt sick, like her stomach was being tied in knots.

“Of course.”

Nicola stood up and practically ran out of the hospital doors. In the cooling August air, she breathed deeply, deliberately, so that she could not spiral out of her own control. She leaned against the wall and stared at the sky. “What have you done?” she asked, even though she knew the man responsible was miles away.

A familiar vehicle swung into the car park; it was extremely badly parked when Bella got out and ran to Nicola. “Where is he?” she demanded.

Nicola wanted to speak. She wanted to break the news to Bella as gently as possible and then brace herself to the inevitable explosion afterwards. But the words would not come to her. How was she meant to say it? Should she leave it to the same doctor who told her? Or bite the bullet and do it here and now?

“Nicola?!” Bella said; there was panic in her voice, thinly veiled by an angry and impatient tone. Anyone who didn’t know Bella would have called it aggression, though Nicola knew it was nothing but fear.

She took Bella by the wrists, just in case she lashed out. “Euan’s dead, Bella,” she said hoarsely.

“What?”

“Euan. He died.” It wasn’t sinking in. That much was obvious from the blank expression on Bella’s face. “He hit his head and he died.”

“How the fuck did he hit his head?”

Nicola swallowed back the tears that threatened to fall. “We were in the pub having a few drinks. Adam started with his vitriol and Euan walked off,” Nicola recounted. “Euan must have fallen down the stairs after Adam hit him. I didn’t see exactly what happened; Malcolm was trying to thump Adam and I was trying to keep them apart and…” she rambled on.

“And?” Bella said brutally.

“And I looked around. I was trying to find Euan, so he could help me hold your dad back. He was lying at the bottom of the stairs.”

“Where’s Adam?”

“He was with the police when I left.”

Bella did not rage. She didn’t scream or cry or shout. She took Nicola by the hand and walked her back into the hospital. The very same doctor who dealt with Nicola met them on the ward. “I’m Bella Whyte,” she said flatly. “Euan Whyte’s wife.”

“I’ve told her,” Nicola said quietly; at least she could spare the doctor the unpleasant task of delivering the blow twice.

The doctor took them back to that same little room. “You’re Euan’s next of kin, aren’t you?” he asked Bella.

“Aye.”

“There are a couple of things we need to go through with you. We’ll need you to formally identify your husband’s body.” Bella’s face paled, but she gave no other indication of distress or fear. The doctor held out an arm to guide her out of the room. “If you’ll just follow me.”

Left alone in that silent room, Nicola found herself running through the fight in her head, over and over again. She should have stopped it. She should have got between Adam and Euan before Adam could throw his second punch. She should have checked Euan was okay before getting between Malcolm and Adam. She should have done it all differently. Maybe if she had, Euan wouldn’t have died.

But what difference did it make? She had given herself this torment when Katie died, too: if she hadn’t gone against James’ wishes and let her go away with Molly, would she still have her daughter? Whatever the answer, it wasn’t bringing Katie back, and it wasn’t going to bring Euan back.

Malcolm…what was she meant to do? She could phone him, but to have a death delivered over the phone was unfair; when Katie had died, he had made sure she had heard it from him, in person, rather than over the phone. And he was looking after all five children and could not react properly without having to explain himself to them.

The minutes ticked by; Nicola tried not to crack. She tried to be strong. Death had a way of eating at her, leaving her without the means to steel herself against its fire. And Euan and his stories and his wicked sense of humour and his unwavering support – that was all gone. He had run her to hospital appointments, befriended Malcolm with ease, bonded with her children, kept Bella as sane as possible, been a confidant to Aoife and kept Ella’s spirits up. He had been a family man, and none of them had realised it until now. Until they were a family without that man. Without that light.

Bella came silently through the door and sat down next to Nicola. “The doctor’s away to get the medical certificate. I’ll need it before I can register the death.” She was so matter-of-fact about it that it sounded like she spoke of a stranger’s death, not her husband’s. “Are you okay?” she asked Nicola.

“I’m okay,” Nicola lied. “What now?”

“Now, we go back to Portree. The coroner’s picking up the body in the morning.”

There was a deeply hollow quality to Bella’s face. Despite her public faux pas on the matter, Nicola had always understood that a Traveller’s sense of home was different to her own; she couldn’t know exactly what it was, but it wasn’t bricks and mortar, or even a street or neighbourhood. She knew better than to equate the culture with homelessness.

But now Bella looked homeless. Rootless. She looked like she was lost, and she didn’t have anywhere to go, and yet she had houses in Portree and London. She had children and parents to spare. She had her career and her life and her traditions, but suddenly, everything was lost. Those bright blue eyes burned with fear and destitution.

As they drove back to Portree, Bella finally spoke as they drove through the Sligachan junction. “Why did Adam hit him?”

“They had some sort of row. I wasn’t with them so I don’t know what kicked it off. Euan started to leave, and Adam called him a ‘filthy mink.’ Euan said he’d rather be a mink than a scaldie,” Nicola recounted. She knew what both those words meant, and she knew that one was racist and the other rooted in history. “Adam punched him. Euan tried to say he didn’t want a fight but Adam grabbed him and hit him again. I think that’s when he must’ve fallen.”

The first flash of true anger flashed across Bella’s face. “So Euan was backing down and that scumbag skelped him anyway?”

“Yes. That’s what I saw, anyway.”

“Would you say it was about Euan being a Traveller?”

“More than anything else,” Nicola reasoned. “Adam had something to say about Catholics and the Irish as well. Pretty much anybody who wasn’t like him. I can’t say what the argument was about in the first place but he called Euan a racial slur before he hit him.”

“You’d say that if you had to make a statement?”

Nicola looked around at her stepdaughter; she found a fury-driven resolution in that young face. “Of course,” she said. “It’s the truth, after all.”


	3. My Least Favourite You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates may or may not happen next week, and may be haywire until late January. Lots of planes and trains, mayhem in Scotland, and moving between host-relatives, so my head might well be up my arse for a while!

Whatever Nicola had expected to be waiting for her at the house, it wasn’t this. The children ran riot, playing and laughing like nothing was wrong. Anyone would have thought that the world had not just crashed and burned in the next town.

Once she was in the door, the noise stopped. “Granny!” Eilidh shouted. She ran into the porch and hugged Nicola. “How was your dirty pint?”

Nicola forced a smile and responded the way she knew she would if she had not just witnessed this girl’s father dying. “You’ve spent way too much time with Aoife!”

As Eilidh giggled, Nicola’s thoughts turned to Ireland, where Aoife had gone back to see family. Fucking hell. Aoife. Who was going to tell her that while she had gone back to Ireland, her host dad had been killed? She was going to be heartbroken. She’d adored the man. Gone out on his lads’ nights, helped him run the home in Bella’s absence, plotted wind ups and schemes with him. They had been very close – probably closer than Aoife intended to be to any of this family when she arrived in London.

She pulled Malcolm outside the house and gently closed the front door. “Why are the kids acting like there’s nothing wrong?” she hissed so that the children would not hear her.

“Because I told them Bella had to go out for a while.”

“You didn’t think to prepare them?!”

“What, so they can sit there and worry all night? Why the fuck would I make them suffer twice?” he argued defiantly.

“He’s dead, Malcolm,” Nicola whispered. The irritation faded from her, replaced by an inescapable sadness. She tried not to cry. She really did. But the look of shock on her husband’s face broke her down until a harsh and painful sob tore out of her chest. “I can’t take anymore death. I can’t. I’m tired of hospitals and death and funerals-” she rambled.

Malcolm pulled her into a tight embrace. “Don’t,” he told her gently. “Don’t fucking do this to yourself.”

Wasn’t this the natural reaction to death? Sadness over the waste of such a young life was permissible, surely. Then why did she feel so guilty for allowing that sadness to rear its head? “I’m trying to be the strong one here,” she told him tearfully. “Bella will need me to be strong. All of the children need me to be strong. _You_ need me to be strong.”

To her surprise, Malcolm did not contradict her. He didn’t tell her that he didn’t need her to carry him. All he gave her was silence. She hated it when he was silent; at least when he was shouting and cursing, she had some idea of what might be going on in his head. Silence was harder to translate than anger – at least he was speaking when he raged. But this was like those weeks he had refused to speak of why he had turned his office on its head, or when he had been unable to deal with the idea of Nicola’s illness.

When she could not know how he felt, and she didn’t know how to ask him, all she could do was cling to him and hope he did not turn on her. So often James had taken his stress and sadness out on her, and she could not quite trust Malcolm not to do the same; after all, she knew he was more than capable of it. He’d done it before they were married and after. The memory of standing in Bella’s kitchen as she listened to his torrent of fury came flooding back to her. There could not be a repeat of that. And yet, those outbursts so often accompanied Malcolm Tucker’s silences.

Nicola pulled away from him and went into the house. As soon as she reached the living room, she felt the silence crush her bones. She had expected the children to be wailing and Bella to be trying to calm them, but there was none of that. There was an incredible emptiness in the air. Where was all the fear and resentment her own house had held when Katie died? Why wasn’t this family destroying itself from the inside out? Why weren’t they hurling abuse at one another?

“I’m gonnae go to the station,” Bella said quietly. “Would you look after the bairns?”

Nicola understood ‘station’ to mean that Bella was going to the police; that was such a bizarre thing for a Traveller to do. They had a long history of mistrusting the police, and not without reason. “Of course,” Nicola said. Bella kissed her children on their heads and left them without another word.

They did not go to bed with any purpose that night. Ella took Sophie and Eilidh upstairs and made a den out of blankets and cushions; Nicola checked on them several times through the night, and it seemed that they drifted in and out of varying depths of sleep. Nicola stayed downstairs with Alasdair and Ben; being the youngest of their respective families, they both had a greater vulnerability around them – or perhaps that was just Nicola’s maternal instinct kicking in. Alasdair, in particular, was so small as he drifted off to sleep in her arms that she was almost afraid he might break if she lay him down on the sofa. If not for the logic that he’d be more comfortable sleeping horizontal, she might have held him all night.

Malcolm vanished to the kitchen. He started drinking before he phoned his sister; Nicola wished he’d had more sense than to do that, but she wandered into the kitchen to hear Malcolm tell Verity that Euan was dead, and that her husband had been the one to kill him. From what she heard of his side of the conversation, Nicola could only gather it hadn’t gone down very well. “Why the fuck would I lie?” Malcolm snarled. “He fucking punched Euan and now Euan’s fucking dead!”

Nicola heard Verity shout down the phone at Malcolm, but she could not make out what she was saying.

“Oh, does he now? Well, that’s okay! That fucking settles it, that does!”

Again, Verity shouted, perhaps louder than before, but somehow her words were more indistinguishable than ever.

“He’d lie because he doesn’t want done for murder or culpable fucking homicide!” Malcolm roared. Nicola put a hand on his shoulder to comfort him; he threw it off. “Fuck’s sake, Verity, he’s a mindless, bigoted cunt!”

Nicola left them to fight and returned to the boys to make sure Malcolm hadn’t woken Alasdair up. “Mum?” Ben asked quietly.

“Yes, darling?”

“Do you think Euan will like Katie?”

That question was like a knife to Nicola’s heart. “I…” she tried to say, but the whole speech about where they both were got stuck in her throat. “I think they’ll get on brilliantly,” Nicola said. She sat down on the sofa next to her son and hugged him close to her. “How are you feeling?”

Ben craned his neck backwards to look up at her. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Why is Euan dead?”

Nicola pulled Ben’s head into her chest, mainly so he could not see her face. “Sometimes really bad things happen to good people.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know,” Nicola sighed. It was a lie, and she never wanted to lie to her children, but she didn’t know how to explain the way in which Euan’s death had come about. “It isn’t fair that he’s gone. I know that.”

By the time Bella got home, both Ben and Alasdair were sleeping in the living room. Nicola had tried to coax Malcolm through to sleep or even just sit with them, but he remained alone in the kitchen after his call with his sister. Bella stood at the living room door and jabbed her thumb towards the kitchen with a frown. “I know,” Nicola whispered. “He phoned Verity. I think she’s taken Adam’s side – sounded like they fell out.”

Bella leaned heavily against the door frame, keys still in her hand. “The police’ll come up in the morning and ask you to give a statement. Dad as well,” she told Nicola. “Once he’s sober.”

Nicola nodded her head. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Bella said. “Got stuff to arrange and all that but…” she trailed away with a shrug. “I’ll have to phone Aoife in the morning as well.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Bella looked at the floor, like she was ashamed to ask for any help. “Would you help me keep an eye on the bairns for the next wee while? Please?”

“Sure,” Nicola said. “Will Aoife fly over for the funeral?”

“I’d say so, aye.”

“Do you want me to pick her up from the airport?”

“Wouldn’t Dad be better driving in Edinburgh?”

“Does your Dad look like he’ll be better than me at anything in the foreseeable future?” Nicola retorted; she could not keep the scathing tone out of her reply. It was all fine and good for Malcolm to sit there and drink himself into oblivion, but there were children who needed to be cared for and police statements to be given and all sorts of arrangements that had to be made, and it could not fall upon Bella alone.

Bella glanced around to look through the kitchen door. “Fair point,” she said. “I’ll make up the spare room for you and Dad.”

“It’s fine. I’ll do it. You try and get some sleep. Even an hour will help, believe me.”

She wanted to tell Bella that she knew how she was feeling, that she’d lost her whole world in one catastrophe too, but she didn’t want to upset the poor girl. Bella seemed to be holding her composure extremely well; Nicola didn’t wish to jeopardise that. To talk about it tonight might break Bella’s resolve too soon. “Just leave the kinchins where they are,” Bella said, kicking off her trainers. “I’ll sleep down here with them.”

Nicola rose to her feet and went to leave the room. At the living room door, she stopped and touched Bella’s hand. “If you need me, come and get me,” she said earnestly. “I’m right here.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Making up the bed in the spare room was somewhat therapeutic; it was a methodical chore to focus her mind on, and it didn’t involve the prospect of going to the police or engaging in the aftermath of a death. It was a period of quiet time before she tried to get Malcolm to go to bed – a task she knew would not be an easy or pleasant one.

Down in the kitchen, she said to Malcolm, “Come to bed.”

As he swayed slightly, Nicola buried her resentment deep behind her love for this man who drunkenly hovered above the Earth she walked. She could not let that drive her out of her head; he was only temporarily missing. This was not permanent. This was his initial reaction. It was not for the long-term.

She helped him to his feet and said, “Careful, don’t wake the children.”

On the stairs, he stopped suddenly; it took Nicola by surprise, and she nearly pulled him off his feet. She watched him as he looked down into her face. Did he see her? The forlorn and abandoned look in his eyes told her that he didn’t. He was out of her reach – or was it he who could not reach her? Nicola could not recall feeling so alone and yet so at home. It was familiar.

“What is it?” she asked him. He didn’t speak. “Malcolm?”

There was no way to know why he did not speak. It could even have been that he’d had too much to drink. She guided him to the top of the stairs and left into the spare bedroom. The stench of whisky quickly filled the room. If not for the danger of being invaded by midges, Nicola would have opened the window.

Silence took over. It filled every corner of the room. It seeped into every room in the house. Silence was not at all golden. It was cold and indecipherable. Her least favourite version of her husband was the silent one. That silent man was not the one she knew how to love.


	4. No Reason to Reason

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm preparing to go home for a month, so updates will probably become patchy with all the things going on there. And I'll be half-dead from Friday until New Year. Three flights in two weeks with travel anxiety and less than ideal weather, followed by Christmas and Hogmanay, might actually kill me. On the plus side, I do get my friend up from Jersey for a week next month, before returning to Ireland!

The police arrested Adam Crichton. He was charged with assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, racially aggravated assault occasioning grievous bodily harm, murder and culpable homicide. However, he was released on bail while the Procurator Fiscal got its case together.

“Why must you call it the Procurator Fiscal?” sighed Nicola one evening. “Nobody but you lot can say it.”

“So Sassenachs like you cannae comprehend what we’re on aboot,” smirked Bella. Nicola looked over at her, surprised she was even able to make a joke. “Anyway, sounds more imposing than ‘CPS’. I don’t want the Procurator Fiscal on my back, but the CPS can do one.”

Nicola shook her head to herself at that logic. “Logierait. Where is it?”

“Near Pitlochry. Just off the A9.”

“Why are you burying him there?”

“That’s where a lot of his family are buried. His parents, his uncle, his cousin.”

Nicola fell silent. There had been so much about Euan she hadn’t known. He told his tall tales and his wise cracks but really, she didn’t know anything about his past that didn’t involve his juvenile misdemeanours. She knew he stole the pies from the van and hid in the tree so as not to get caught by his mother, but what was his mother like? How had she died? When did he start staying in houses? When did he meet Bella? Was he ever imprisoned for his silly behaviour?

He had been so decent, even if a bit of a scamp.

A deluge of grief fell over Nicola. To hold back her tears was a massive undertaking but she had to keep her composure for Bella’s sake. “Have you got everything arranged?” she asked.

“Aye. Listen, could you go to Edinburgh and get Aoife? Her plane lands at eight tomorrow morning. I know it’s a fucking ridiculous-”

“Of course,” Nicola said before Bella could talk herself out of asking. “Do you think you could take the children to Logierait and Aoife and I will meet you there?” Bella nodded silently. “I’ll take your father with me.”

“I can watch him.”

“He’s a fucking grown man,” Nicola replied. “He shouldn’t need his daughter to look after him. He can get his arse in the car and stop being a thorn in everyone’s fucking side!”

It was the first real outburst of frustration Nicola had allowed herself to vent, but Malcolm was starting to do her head in. If it was just the drinking, she didn’t think she would have minded so much, but it was his entire persona. Her husband had been replaced by a man who didn’t talk, who gave nothing freely, who drank himself into oblivion, who ran from the situation, who continued to flounder with no apparent wish to swim. What Nicola found the most upsetting was that he was supposed to help her guide the family through this – not least because his daughter had just lost her husband – and instead he chose to behave like an outsider.

Nicola, in logical terms, was more an outsider to this part of the family than he was. She had no biological or cultural ties to Bella and Euan; the only reasons they were close were that they were both ministers and Nicola married Bella’s father. She was sure there were plenty of wives who would have stepped back and allowed Bella to crumble while her dad failed to be of any use. But she could not do that to Bella. That would not be kind, and Nicola’s priority right now was to be kind to those around her, particularly her stepdaughter. She still remembered Bella’s reaction to Katie’s death; she had done what little she could to lift their spirits and show them kindness.

“He’ll come around,” Bella reasoned. How odd, that she should be the one who spoke so calmly.

“I wish he’d fucking hurry up about it,” spat Nicola. “I’m his wife, not his minder.”

But even as those words passed over her lips, she could begin to see that, yes, in some ways, she was his minder. She had signed up for that when she married him. Just as he had watched over her so often before, wasn’t it now her time to watch over him?

* * *

The road southeast to Edinburgh was long but thankfully without traffic, given that they set off before three in the morning. Nicola might have got Malcolm to drive part of the way, had she not smelled the drink on him; to let him drive was to risk an accident or a drink driving charge. “Darling,” she approached the subject as she turned off the Broxden roundabout onto the M90, “don’t you think you might be drinking just a little bit too much?”

Though she did not take her eyes off the road, Nicola knew exactly the affronted expression Malcolm probably wore. At seven o’clock in the morning, both dressed for a funeral, she didn’t think he very much wanted to discuss anything to do with his drinking habits, but she was his wife and so had to ask him.

“Don’t you think you _talk_ too fucking much?” he snapped at her.

“Maybe, but _you_ don’t talk enough! An unfortunate trait you seem to have passed down to your daughter, I might add.”

“What the fuck are you on about?”

“Haven’t you noticed? Her husband was just killed and she doesn’t even seem all that bothered.”

Nicola glanced around to see Malcolm shrugged and lean into the passenger side door. “Probably her way of dealing with it.”

“What, not dealing with it at all?”

“Says the fucking headcase who went back to work the day after your daughter died!” he said, his tone one of outraged incredulity. “You really don’t have the fucking right to pass judgement there!”

Nicola shook her head to himself. He was impossible sometimes. “I’m not passing judgement. I’m worried about her.”

“She’s not your child.”

“No, but she’s yours, and you’re my husband. Don’t even think about blocking me out.”

That seemed to be the default reaction for a traumatised Tucker. Even Bella did it, though with far less hostility. She had the emotional awareness to know Nicola was trying to look out for her, at least. “Just leave it the fuck alone. Leave _me_ alone,” he grumbled. Nicola knew he was probably tired and a little hungover, but she could not let him off the hook.

That was why she waited. She parked at Edinburgh Airport and waited for Aoife. They were early – the plane wasn’t even due to have landed yet – so they had a few minutes to talk. “I’m trying to look after my family here, Malcolm, and none of you are making it very bloody simple,” she said. She tried to remain calm, to use her words with a level head, but that fucking expression on his face made her want to punch the steering wheel in front of her. Her calm façade broke as quickly as she had built it. “Will you just fucking _speak_?!” she shouted. “Preferably before you drink yourself into a fucking grave?!”

He did not even so much as look at her. It was so unlike him to keep quiet. Usually he shouted and bawled and called everyone he clapped eyes on the foulest name he could think of. Nicola could deal with that. It was the Malcolm she knew best, and she could handle his worst fit of rage. But this resolute silence meant something sinister lurked under the still waters, and the possibilities of where it might lure him terrified her. What if he ended up like James? She told herself repeatedly Malcolm would never be like that, but how could she be sure when he kept shutting her out? Was he playing a game or was he genuinely incapable of speaking his mind?

Nicola turned her head to look him in the face; he still did not move meet her gaze. “I love you,” she said. “You know that. I’d do anything to help you. But I can’t do anything to help any of you if nobody tells me what they need from me.”

She had no reason to try and reason with him when he was like this. It was so clear it would get her nowhere. But some small, naïve part of her was foolish enough to believe that reasoning with him would do some sort of good for them.

She bit her lip as she held herself back. Instead of shouting into a void, she met his silence with her own and stared out the window until she spotted Aoife striding out of the airport. Nicola pressed the horn and waved Aoife over; Aoife legged it across the road to the set down bay. She, too, was dressed in a black trouser suit.

Logierait felt much further away than it really was. They stopped in Perth to get something to eat; Aoife had been at Dublin Airport for four o’clock and had not eaten at all. So, at around ten, they were sitting with food and coffee, trying to wrap their minds around the idea that they were heading north to bury Euan.

“So what’s the story?” Aoife asked as she bit into a sausage sandwich in a café. “How’s things?”

It sounded so casual, and yet those questions were ones Nicola did not feel equipped to answer. “Well, Bella’s coping remarkably well. She seems fine.” Nicola didn’t feel the need to worry Aoife by adding that anyone who seemed fine in the days after their husband’s death wasn’t fine at all. “The children have their moments but they’ll get through it. Malcolm is-”

“Fine,” Malcolm finished for her. “And gonnae head over the road and get some Red Bull. Either of you want anything?”

“I’m grand, thanks,” Aoife declined. Nicola simply shook her head and watched Malcolm leave the café. “He’s not fine, is he?”

Nicola watched him through the window, crossing the road like he didn’t give a flying fuck if a car hit him. “No. Whatever he is, he’s not fine,” she sighed.

“And how’re you?” Aoife asked.

“I’m busy trying to make sure we don’t all descend into chaos. We’re going back to London at the weekend, as well. God only knows how Malcolm and Bella will cope with going back to work.”

“I’ll keep an eye on Bella, Nicola, you know that.”

“It’s not your job-”

“I feckin’ live with her!” Aoife said earnestly. “You think I’m gonna live in the same house as her just now and _not_ have eyes in the back of me fuckin’ head?!”

Nicola smiled sadly, but was quietly grateful that Aoife was willing to take on some of the burden. Nobody expected her to, of course, but there was no point in trying to dissuade her. Aoife knew her own mind, and it was very difficult to get her to change it.

At the churchyard, Nicola was unsurprised to see no sign of Verity and Erin. However, her mother-in-law, Annie, was there. At seventy-six years of age, she had made the journey to Pitlochry by train on her own, and Bella had picked her up at the station. What infuriated Nicola, though, was the way Malcolm blanked his own mother. He didn’t say a word to her; the woman was left to stand there and wonder what the fuck she had done wrong.

Annie turned and went into the church. Once she was inside and out of earshot, Nicola pulled Malcolm back out of the doorway and hissed at him, “Don’t you dare take your foul mood out on your mother!”

“Fuck off, Nicola. It’s none of your business.”

“No, Malcolm, you’re not doing this. You’re not treating everybody around you like shit because of some misplaced guilt over how Euan died. I won’t allow it.”

“Oh, I didn’t realise I married my fucking headmistress!” he sneered.

It was the movement of his eyes. He hid it better than she ever did, but the way his eyes moved in and out of focus gave him away. “Hand it over,” she whispered. “You’re not going into that church with a bottle in your pocket.” He let out a derisive snort and turned away from her, but Nicola, for once, was faster than he was. She blocked his path and put her hand inside his suit jacket. She found the quarter bottle instantly. This was why he had ignored his mother. If anyone was going to notice he’d been drinking, it was Annie.

Nicola took it, unscrewed the lid, and poured the whisky down the drain on the edge of the car park. Malcolm was furious. It was the first real reaction he’d given her that wasn’t petty quips and insults. She almost relished it. “Nicola!” he shouted. “What was the fucking point of that?!”

“Keep your voice down!” Nicola told him. Inside, several heads had turned. “It’s a church, for crying out loud!”

“What d’you want from me?!” he demanded, though he had lowered his voice a little to say it.

“I want you to go in there, pay your respects to your son-in-law, and _behave yourself_!”

“Why the fuck should I behave myself? Nobody else ever fucking does! You-”

But a familiar voice stopped him from getting into a rant. “Would you two stop makin’ a fuckin’ holy show of yourselves?!” Aoife snarled quietly. “There’s a time and a place for this sorta thing. And you,” she turned on Malcolm and clipped him around the ear. She was probably the only person, besides Annie and Verity, who would get away with it. “You stop feckin’ drinkin’! Sober the fuck up, ya miserable prick!”

To hear a Catholic woman use such language at a church startled Nicola, but she had to admit Aoife was right. Malcolm threw both of them a look of disgust and stomped into to the church, leaving the two women to head inside and carry themselves with the dignity Malcolm Tucker seemed to have wilfully abandoned.


	5. The Hard End of Prejudice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2018 is nearly over and done with. Thank fuck for that. If I don't post before Tuesday, Happy New Year!

“Fuck this!” Bella Whyte shouted. Nicola came out of her office to find her stepdaughter striding across the department, leaving Ollie, Glenn and Terri bemused in her wake, presumably in search of Malcolm. “Fuck _all_ of this!”

Nicola met her halfway, in front Glenn’s desk. “What’s the matter?” she asked, though she didn’t reckon the headline ‘MINISTER’S GYPSY HUSBAND KILLED IN PUB BRAWL’ had done anything to soothe Bella’s mood before her return to work.

“If I hear another fucking person ask me, ‘And how are you coping with the death of your husband, Mrs. Whyte?’” she mimicked a pretentious, English middle-class accent, “I swear to fucking-”

“Okay,” Nicola said, trying to keep her tone soothing. “It’s alright.”

“Tell that to fucking Laura and my staff and every fucking press hack that’s called the fucking Scottish Office!”

Nicola had known this was coming. Bella was, in certain ways, rather predictable, though Nicola often wondered if it was only because she was so like her father. And Bella, like Malcolm, found rage in place of despair. Like her dad, the one time to worry about Bella Whyte was when she wept or when she was silent. “It will pass,” Nicola said. “It’s only been a month – give it time. Their interest will wane, and this will pass.”

“Aye, right!” Bella scoffed angrily. “There’s still the fucking trial and Dad’s fucking-”

“Try and keep calm, Bella,” Terri said. Nicola tried to give Terri a look that she hoped might tell her not to interfere, but Terri couldn’t take a hint if it knocked her teeth down her throat.

And sure enough, Bella turned and leaned over Terri’s desk. “I _am_ fucking calm, you useless puddle of piss,” she snarled. Nicola held back a smirk; was Terri ever going to learn? “So you just keep that oversized fucking mouth shut.”

Terri looked at Bella, seemingly quite shocked. Though well known for her sharp tongue, Bella had rarely unleashed it on the DoSAC team, with the exception of Ollie, who had been drafted in to the Scottish Office once and fucked up on a scale even Nicola would have struggled to compete with. But this was something different. This was a vicious fury that threatened to unleash itself upon Terri. It was like an animal waiting in Bella’s chest, waiting for an unwitting victim to devour with its grief and rage. Nicola had known that animal, and to carry it was far more painful than to set it free. If it came to it, Nicola would volunteer to provoke it out of Bella just so it didn’t rip through her stepdaughter from the inside out.

Nicola came forward to cool the situation down. “I’ve been on this end of it,” she reminded Bella. “I know it’s maddening. Enough to drive you up a tree. But you know what’s happening, and as long as you know what’s right and wrong, you will be okay.”

Bella’s mouth closed tightly; she was holding something back. It was not like Bella Whyte to hold back when she was angry.

“Why don’t we go for lunch?” suggested Nicola.

Bella nodded once, but the movement was tense and rigid.

“Do you want your father?”

And to Nicola’s surprise and extreme discomfort, Bella shook her head without a word. It occurred to her that Bella had not come here to find her father. She had come here to find her stepmother. For reasons best known only to Bella, she seemed to believe that Nicola was a better person to turn to than Malcolm. Knowing that, Nicola found it disconcerting to walk Bella out of the building to the café nearest. She had not been expecting to have this duty thrust upon her.

Once they were settled at a table with coffee, Nicola looked Bella dead in the eyes. “What is it? What has upset you so much?”

Bella sighed. “Things haven’t changed, have they?”

“What do you mean?”

“People still hate us.”

“Who?”

“ _Us_ ,” Bella said emphatically. “Travellers.”

“I don’t.”

“The Home Secretary said Euan must’ve provoked the names Adam called him. Ben Swain reckons it’s fair game to hate Euan for his race because ‘gypsies are just like cockroaches,’” she said bitterly. Nicola internally winced at that comparison and made a mental note to slap Ben Swain the next time she saw him. “One of my fucking junior ministers said I should’ve known better than to marry a dirty pikey.”

Nicola fought down her disgust and tried to appear more composed than she felt. “Do their opinions matter?” she asked.

“Of course they fucking do!” exclaimed Bella. “Don’t you see, Nicola? The world doesn’t blame Adam for knocking _my husband_ down the fucking stairs! Or for hitting him or miscryin’ him! And they don’t have any problem with saying it. Even the fucking law doesn’t protect him like it protects everybody else!”

“Then work to change the law. Do something constructive about it,” Nicola urged her.

“In this fucking cess pit? There’s no shame in hating Travellers so why the fuck would any of our colleagues work to help them?”

It was a fair point. A valid one. But there was so little Nicola could see to do about it all. While Nicola sometimes felt beleaguered by the world, she could only imagine how the world must have treated Bella. Nicola probably would have surrendered to it many moons ago. “I really don’t know what I can say or do that’ll help,” Nicola admitted helplessly.

“I don’t expect you to say or do anything. I just need somebody I can speak to,” Bella said. “Someone I can see, not just on the end of a phone.” Despite the helpless misery, Nicola was rather flattered that Bella had chosen her to find some comfort in. Not Malcolm, Aoife, Laura or Victoria, but Nicola. They were perhaps closer than Nicola had realised. “Did you find out why Dad’s so weird?”

Nicola sighed. “I got some drunken rubbish about it being his fault, but I honestly don’t see how it could be.”

“You know what he’s like. He doesn’t think like us.”

“I can handle the anger. I can handle the shouting and the swearing. But this…this thing he does when he doesn’t talk at all,” Nicola explained, “it’s not like him. It’s like he’s been pushed so far that the outburst just won’t come.”

“Oh, it will,” Bella said, half-laughing as she took a sip of coffee. “Just you wait.”

Nicola’s sanity depended on her believing what Bella told her, but still she was unsure that it would ever come. The lack of rage, given the events of the past month, was deeply unsettling for Nicola. When Malcolm went quiet, the harm he did was almost always done to no-one but himself. “Why would he think it’s his fault, though?” asked Nicola, more of herself than of Bella. “He didn’t provoke anyone. Believe it or not, up until the point where Adam hit Euan, your dad was very well-behaved.”

“Go and ask him.”

“What?”

“Now. Go and ask him now, while he’s sober and distracted.”

There was some logic in that suggestion, but whether Nicola could pull it off was the make or break. It was so difficult to speak to him, to get any truth out of him, when he was like this. She much preferred his ill-temper and sobriety to his current smothering silence and drinking. “Maybe I’ll go and see him on my way back to the office.”

“Aye, you do that,” Bella said; her tone was encouraging, but the terrifying light in her eyes seemed to have dulled down to nothing. “You know, even Eilidh’s been getting fucking tormented since she went back to the school.”

“Because her dad was murdered?”

Bella laughed bitterly. “No, because her dad was a gypsy bastard.”

That laugh, she realised now, was at Nicola’s naivety. “But they’re just kids!” she replied.

“They’re kids with bigoted parents,” Bella reasoned. Of course. The parents fed their opinions down to their children, who then targeted Eilidh at school. “And the teachers are doing absolutely fuck all about it.”

If he was at all fit for it, Nicola would have said to send Malcolm into the school to sort it out, but the state he was in, work was enough of a struggle. Though she knew she was far less effectual than Malcolm, Nicola offered, “Do you want me to go in and speak to the headteacher? I know it’s not the way things should be, but they might take it more seriously if it comes from me.”

Obviously furious that she had to do so, Bella nodded her head. “Okay. Thanks, Nicola.”

Nicola smiled slightly and patted Bella’s hand. “Things will get better, darling. They always do.”

As Bella let her hand be held, Nicola noticed that none of her anger was over Euan’s death – only the attitudes regarding it. Now she stopped to think on it, Bella still had not reacted to losing her husband. Everyone – Nicola included – had believed Bella would be fit to kill when she got the news, but she had been…well, not calm, but business-like. Methodical. Matter-of-fact. She looked after the children and she tried to look after Malcolm and she did not indulge herself in any emotional response. Today’s anger had been the first bout Nicola had seen her show since that night.

“Bella…” Nicola began hesitantly. “Bella, are you okay? I know how hard it is to figure your life out after something like this. And, you know, I just want to know that you feel like you can ask me for help. Don’t try and do it on your own. It never ends well, trust me.”

“I know. If I need you, I’ll shout on you. I promise.”

When Bella said it, she meant it. That was where she diverged from her father; Malcolm said he’d come forward for help, but he so rarely did.

Nicola etched that into her mind as she knocked on the door to her husband’s office. “Come in!” he shouted. She stepped over the threshold to see him typing furiously; she briefly wondered who was getting a bollocking this time. “What’s up?” he asked her disinterestedly.

She crossed the room and sat on the edge of his desk. “Malcolm, are you alright? What you said the other night-”

“I’m fine,” he cut her off. Nicola stared at him. “Is that all?”

She almost walked away. She _wanted_ to walk away. But he had so often persisted with her and refused to allow her lies to fill the gaping holes in the picture, and she had to do the same for him. “Last night, you said what happened to Euan was your fault,” she said gently. “What did you mean by that?”

“I didn’t fucking say that.”

“You fucking did.”

He stopped typing and turned to face her. From the look in his eyes, she gathered he didn’t even remember what he said last night. His drinking was another issue she wanted to address, but she had to take it one step at a time if she wanted to avoid overwhelming him and making it all so much worse. “I was haverin’ a load of shite.”

“No, that’s what you did most of last night. When you said that, you had more about yourself.”

Malcolm looked at her like he was doing some sort of risk assessment. Eventually, he said, “What if I fucking knocked him down the stairs when I ran to go for Adam?”

“I don’t think you did, Malcolm,” Nicola said carefully. “Euan was nowhere near you.”

“I fucking felt somebody behind me. Fucking sure I did.”

“The pub was busy. It might have been anyone.”

“But it might’ve been Euan.”

“But it wasn’t.”

“Are you fucking certain of that? ‘Cause I’m definitely fucking not.”

Nicola paused for a moment and tried to remember the scene that evening. Adam had hit Euan and Malcolm had went to confront Adam. There were so many people, both sitting and standing. So many locals, so many tourists, that Nicola could not be sure who was where. She only knew where she had been. And as much as she wanted to alleviate Malcolm’s doubts, she could not lie to him only for it to transpire that he was right. “No,” she finally said. “No, I can’t be certain. Without CCTV, none of us can be certain. However, I do believe Euan was already at the bottom of those stairs by the time you got to Adam.”

Malcolm stared at her, his eyes hard and unforgiving. “Exactly. And I can’t help wondering if I did fucking kill him.”

“But either way, none of it would have happened if Adam hadn’t picked a fight!”

“I shouldn’t have even let Euan come with us! Fuck’s sake, I knew what Adam was like! He’s been married to my fucking sister long enough!” he said. She heard a desperation in his words that left her petrified. “I should’ve told him to stay at home.”

There was nothing Nicola could say. She didn’t know how that felt, to wonder if she had physically knocked someone down a flight of stairs to their death. And even though she had blamed herself for Katie’s death, Katie was a child and therefore Nicola’s responsibility. Euan had been an adult. “Even if you had told him to stay at home, do you really think he would have done as you told him to?” Nicola asked.

Malcolm let out a slow breath. “Look, I’m busy typing up an email to the Foreign Secretary. We’ll talk about this when we get home, okay?”

She knew that wasn’t going to happen. She knew that there would be no conversation when she got home. But there was also no doubt that she was dismissed from his office. “Fine,” she sighed. She leaned down and kissed him. “See you later. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

At the door, Nicola turned to look at Malcolm. He was already back to his email. She shook her head to herself and left him. He might have given her an answer, but she had no means of helping him out of that mindset. There were no questions left to ask him now.


	6. Glasgow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update:  
> 1\. Dementia is an awful disease.  
> 2\. My aunt is a bit of a cow.  
> 3\. My uncle is a lazy twat.  
> 4\. As much as I love her, my mum really needs to get her shit together.  
> 5\. I can't fucking wait to get back to Ireland.

Why the fuck did this always happen? This fucking family, all Nicola ever seemed to do was pull them off one another. And Annie, at seventy-odd years of age, could not separate her two children, never mind her granddaughter into the bargain. “Oi!” roared Nicola, all pretence of dignity out the window. Whatever this situation was, it was _not_ fucking dignified. “Cut it out!”

With the three of them fighting – though Nicola was unsure they remembered what they actually fought for at this point – it was difficult to sort through who was doing and saying what. “Come a-fucking-head!” a woman roared; Nicola could only guess that was Verity.

“Quit it!” Annie bellowed. “There’s none o’ the three o’ ye too old fur a skelp roon’ the fuckin’ lug!”

Bella froze. She stepped back from her father and her aunt and looked at Annie like she only just remembered the old woman was even there. Her expression of guilt and embarrassment told Nicola a story of a young woman who had started to lose herself. She never normally would have done that in front of Annie, and Nicola knew that.

“The fuck am I doin’?” whimpered Bella. “The fuck?!”

Annie took Bella’s hand. “It’s okay. Yer aw’right.”

But Malcolm and Verity remained locked in their wrestling match; Verity was far stronger than Nicola would have guessed. Either that, or Malcolm’s inebriation was working against him. Nicola grabbed Malcolm by the upper arm, but he threw her off without even thinking about it and continued to fight his own sister. “Bloody hell, where’s Aoife when you need her?!” growled Nicola.

It was like Malcolm was in a trance. He didn’t seem to feel her touch or hear her voice, and if he did, it had no effect on the venom he apparently felt for his sister.

“Malcolm!” Nicola called out. “Stop!”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Bella broke away from Annie and took Verity by surprise. Before Nicola quite knew what she’d done, Bella had Verity face down on the floor with her arm trapped behind her back. Though obviously unhurt, Verity was practically foaming at the mouth with rage. Nicola took her opportunity. She stood in front of Malcolm, but he still didn’t see her. He looked right through her so he could stare murderously at Verity. Nicola could almost see the red descend over her husband’s eyes as he tried to manhandle Nicola out of his way.

“Malcolm, no!” she snarled; it was all she could do to hold him at bay. “Malcolm!” His grip on her shoulder tightened painfully; there was so little that Nicola could do to reason with him.

Nicola slapped Malcolm hard across the face. Like Bella had done, he stood still so suddenly that he might have been frozen in time. His gaze fell upon Nicola and she saw him come back to himself. His hands released her. “Nicola, I-” he began, but Nicola though better of letting him speak.

“Bella, take your dad out to the car, please,” she asked of her stepdaughter, though she did not stop searching those bright blue eyes before her, trying to find her husband.

Verity was soon on her feet, shooting her brother looks that could have killed a corpse, and Bella took Malcolm by the arm. Before she took Malcolm from the room, Bella turned to face Annie, her eyes far too bright. “I’m so sorry, Annie.”

“It’s no’ your fault, lass.”

* * *

** Monday **

Nicola had been to Glasgow only once, and it was straight to the airport for a flight home to London. She had not lingered; life with James was not free enough to explore anywhere he didn’t take her. Malcolm, for all his faults, let her look around herself and take in the view. She didn’t think he knew how vital that was to her survival.

Every time she had envisioned herself visiting Glasgow, she had thought of family gatherings, of Annie, of Verity, of Erin, of all Malcolm’s relations and old friends. She had thought she would be getting to see the Glaswegian side to her husband’s life. Maybe a night out that got a bit wild or a family outing to Loch Lomond.

What she had not envisioned was the halls of Glasgow High Court. The walls, though they left plenty of space, were imposing and seemed to crawl towards her when she did not pay attention.

She tried to remember everything her mother had told her before they set off. A whole list of things, most of them about Malcolm: don’t be surprised if he cracks up; if you are distressed, don’t let him see it; be brave; be strong; tell the truth; above all else, be kind.

As she looked at her husband right now, that last instruction never seemed more important or more difficult. Nicola exchanged a glance with Bella and knew they were thinking the same thing – this was not going to be an easy day.

Sitting in the gallery, Nicola watched as witnesses took to the stand. Dr. Mairead Beaton, who tried to save Euan, was first. She got it relatively easy; she was mostly questioned about Euan’s injuries and the reactions of those involved.

“Nicola, Mr. Whyte’s mother-in-law,” Mairead said, “she stayed with him. His father-in-law went to alert Mrs. Whyte.”

“And what about the reaction of the accused?” asked the advocate for the Procurator Fiscal.

“Mr. Crichton sort of just hovered on the stairs.”

“Did he try to help save Mr. Whyte’s life?”

“No. He didn’t show any interest in trying to help.”

“How much of the altercation did you witness, Dr. Beaton?”

“I’d just got to the pub,” Mairead said. “I was ordering a drink at the bar, listening to the band, dodging tourists, all the usual things. I saw Mr. Whyte walk away from Mr. Crichton, but Mr. Crichton pulled him back and punched him. Shouted something about Mr. Whyte being a ‘filthy mink’ – not that I didn’t already know the Whytes are Travelling people. Mr. Whyte told Mr. Crichton that he’d rather be a mink than a scaldie, and then he said he didn’t want a fight. Mr. Crichton hit him; Malcolm Tucker went to defend him, and Mr. Crichton made further racist remarks, this time about Bella Whyte and a girl I now know is Aoife Hannigan, the Whytes’ Irish au pair. The two fought and then Nicola Tucker dived in, until they realised Euan Whyte was lying unconscious at the bottom of the stairs leading onto Wentworth Street.”

“Do you feel the altercation was racially motivated?”

“Is there any other reason to shout that across a full pub?” reasoned Mairead. “Whether or not it began as an argument about race, I can’t say. All I can say with certainty is that right before Mr. Crichton struck Mr. Whyte, he made a point of shouting a racial slur.”

Though her experience of the courts was limited to the convictions of her first husband and Armitage, the associate of James’ who was now in Barlinnie for knocking Ben out, Nicola felt Mairead’s testimony was fair, but erred on the side of Adam’s guilt. When she looked at the jury, though, their stony faces seemed worryingly unconvinced. When James and Armitage had been prosecuted, the jury had given more visible sympathy than this one appeared to.

The judge’s voice was the one that pulled Nicola out of her reverie. “We shall take a recess for lunch now and reconvene at half past one.”

Out of the courtroom, Nicola rounded on Malcolm. “How are you feeling?”

“Fucking brilliant,” he muttered as he stared at the screen of his phone; Nicola was not really sure if he was actually reading anything or just trying not to meet her gaze. “What about you?” Although he did not look her in the eyes when he asked, she knew he genuinely cared about the answer. He always did, even if he could not let her see it. Though many wouldn’t, Nicola believed he loved her at every high and every low – it was just that sometimes he wasn’t sure why he loved anyone at all. She understood that about him; if she didn’t, there was no way she could have ever loved him.

“I’m okay,” she assured him with a gentle smile. Nicola linked his arm with hers and guided him to a bench. “It’ll be difficult. I’m prepared for that.”

“Makes fucking one of us.”

“You’ll be alright, Malcolm. No matter what, I’m here, and Bella’s here. You’re not on your own at all.”

He didn’t say anything in reply. Bella sat down next to Nicola; the girl did something Nicola found extremely bizarre. She took Nicola’s hand, interlocked their fingers and squeezed tightly. It was the closest she had come to asking for comfort since Euan had died.

“We should probably get something to eat,” Nicola said, trying to break the quiet helplessness.

“Not really hungry,” murmured Bella.

If she was honest with herself, Nicola was not hungry either. Her stomach churned with the stress of being in a courtroom for a third time in two years, all because of badly behaved men. Every time was worse. She had hoped she might be more used to it this time, but no. This was a murder case. This was her son-in-law’s murder. How could this be anything like anything else? It was almost surreal.

She wanted to tell Malcolm to speak to his family, to seek some solace in them, to try and talk to Verity. The only reason she didn’t say a word about it was that she knew she’d make more progress speaking to that stone pillar over there. Of course, Annie would surely know who was right and who was wrong here, if only Malcolm would fucking talk to her, but he had assumed Annie had sided with Verity and refused to even look in her direction.

Had either of them approached Annie, Nicola believed it would have been alright. Annie was not a stupid woman. She had enough sense to know what her own son-in-law was like. It left Nicola in the unenviable position of being the brick wall that stood between Malcolm and his own family. If she had her own way, she’d build the wall around them and cage them in until they sat down and bloody talked, but she was not naïve enough to believe it would help at the moment. There was too much hurt and anger flying around.

Of course, Nicola was also sure that, beneath her marital loyalty, Verity had to know her husband was a racist and was capable of violence. She simply had to. Even in the throes of her own marriage, Nicola had known what James was. She had ignored it, yes, but she had always known it was there. Surely Verity could say the same?

“I’m just going to call my mum and make sure everything is okay at home,” Nicola said. She left Malcolm and Bella and found a secluded corner of the courthouse in which to dial her mother’s phone number.

Victoria answered after a single ring tone. “Nicola,” she breathed out, like she had been waiting in anxiety for the call. “How is it going?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Nicola. “The doctor who tended to Euan in the pub definitely got the point across, but I’m not sure the jury understands it.”

“Yes, well, please remember that we mustn’t expect miracles, darling,” Victoria reminded her. “This may not go the way it ought to, and you must deal with that if it comes.”

“Yes, Mum,” sighed Nicola. “How are the children?”

Victoria paused a moment. “They’re okay. A little out of sorts, perhaps, but that’s to be expected.”

Nicola leaned back into the wall. “What are they saying back home?”

“In the press? Much the same as they’ve said for the weeks and months already, I’d guess. I haven’t paid much attention to the press coverage. I’d rather not let the children see that.”

“Of course.”

“What is it, love?” asked Victoria.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re carrying a weight around your neck. I can hear it.”

Nicola hesitated but ultimately decided to confide in her mother. “I’m starting to think we need to leave London. Leave the jobs, the city, everything. The more I see, the more toxic it feels. Even up here, it’s nothing like what we’ve been through at home since Euan died,” she explained, thinking of the headlines and the absolute twaddle some of her colleagues had come away with. “I just want my life to be simple and quiet, with my husband and my kids.”

“That’s all anyone wants, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.”

“Do you want to know what I think?” asked Victoria. Nicola didn’t speak, but her mother knew that was her saying that she wanted her opinion. “I think you should have moved when Katie died. I know you cling to London because it’s familiar, but it’s never been good for you. Your job is terrible for your mental health, and so is Malcolm and Bella’s, especially after all you’ve been through. You need stability and routine, love. You’re not going to get that as a politician. None of you will.”

And there it was. Victoria had just said exactly what Nicola had hoped she would: that to uproot her family might well be the right thing to do.


	7. The Rot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Current status: living in County Louth, disowned by my uncle, on the verge of some sort of breakdown. It's all good.

** Tuesday **

“Is it true, Mrs. Tucker, that both Mr. Whyte and your husband were drunk on the night in question?”

“They’d had a drink, but they were not drunk,” Nicola replied sharply. “We were on holiday with our children and grandchildren, so none of us were _drunk_.”

She rather resented the insinuation that either Malcolm or Euan’s alcohol consumption had been to blame for Adam’s actions. That they could be blamed for Euan’s murder…Nicola only hoped the jury did not fall for this. However, she knew better than to be optimistic. Every time she was optimistic, she set herself up for a spectacular crash.

“Would you take the opinion that Mr. Crichton is a racist?”

Nicola let out a bark of a laugh. “Well, that day he said he has a problem with immigrants, the Irish, Catholics, Travellers – he even implied that because Euan was a Traveller, he couldn’t read. Euan Whyte could read both English and Gaelic, so he was actually a step ahead of any of us,” she said, echoing what Malcolm had said to Adam about his poorly chosen joke. “So, yes, in my opinion, Adam Crichton is a racist. A general bigot, I’d say.”

The silence in the courtroom screamed at her, while the walls seemed to collapse to the ground and bury her in the rubble. Breathing was a chore on which she had to truly concentrate. “No further questions, my Lord,” the advocate for the prosecution said to the judge.

Adam’s lawyer then stood up; Nicola could tell from the look on his face that he was about to put her through the wringer.

“What about you, Mrs. Tucker? What part did you play?”

“I split my husband and Adam Crichton up before they got the chance to fight, and then I did my best to help Euan.”

“How did you attempt to help him?”

“I called for an ambulance and, with the help of the doctor, Mairead Beaton, I did what little I could. I tried to keep him comfortable.”

“Did you confront Mr. Crichton?”

“I did.”

“What was said?”

“I let him know he was in deep trouble. Which he was,” she added firmly, “since he’d just knocked his nephew down the stairs. After that, the police took him and I went with Euan in the ambulance, to the hospital in Broadford.”

“Mrs. Tucker, are you sure Mr. Crichton actually knocked Mr. Whyte down those steps?”

“Of course!”

“Did you see Mr. Whyte fall?”

Nicola hesitated. Hadn’t she been calling out for Euan to help her? Hadn’t she been frustrated by his failure to appear? She hadn’t even known he was at the bottom of those stairs, so how could she say with any certainty how he had fallen? She hadn’t deduced that Adam was to blame until after she had seen him, had she? “No,” she admitted grudgingly. “No, I didn’t see him fall.”

“If you did not see Mr. Whyte fall, then how do you know it was Mr. Crichton’s fault? He may have just stumbled, or perhaps your husband had unwittingly pushed him down the stairs when he attacked Mr. Crichton.”

“Malcolm didn’t attack-”

“Mrs. Tucker, how can you be sure it wasn’t _you_ who knocked him over in your haste to separate Mr. Tucker and Mr. Crichton?”

Nicola felt the blood drain from her cheeks. She recalled Malcolm saying he wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t been his fault. But she hadn’t felt anyone but Adam or Malcolm at her back at any point. She was sure of it. “I didn’t knock Euan over! I shouted for him to help me and he didn’t come. I was nowhere near him!”

“You can’t say that for sure, can you? If you didn’t see Mr. Whyte fall, then you do not _know_ whether he fell on his own, or it was you or your husband who – whatever your intent – pushed him while trying to defend him or prevent any further altercation. In the absence of CCTV footage, there is no way of being sure about that, is there?”

The man was right. Nicola could not deny that at all. Of course there was no way of knowing without a doubt how Euan had fallen. It was only Nicola’s gut and Adam’s reaction to the whole scene that reassured her that she was right about this. Her instinct about politics might well be faulty, but about her children and her family, she was rarely wrong when her gut told her something. Once upon a time, she would have doubted it. James’ influence on her self-esteem would have convinced her she was wrong. But now, she knew better. She knew when she was right and when she was wrong. The frustration came from not being able to prove categorically that she was right here.

“All I can say is what I saw. Adam Crichton verbally and physically assaulted Euan Whyte, and Euan Whyte ended up dead. Whether he knocked him down or not, Adam started that fight and triggered the chain of events that killed Euan.”

The lawyer looked less than impressed by her response, and so pressed her further. “It could be argued that the chain of events was, if not triggered, then exasperated by your husband. Did he not argue with Mr. Crichton about politics before the altercation with Mr. Whyte even began?”

“No. Malcolm challenged him on his racism and bigotry. Are we to give racists a free pass in case we annoy them, and they kill someone?”

Nicola couldn’t tell if this lawyer was competent or not. It seemed to her he was pushing her to speak up against Adam, but was he doing so to make her seem unreasonable? Nicola was unsure, and it panicked her a little that she could not know what he was playing at; she’d dealt with enough of these mind games already. She didn’t need to be paraded in a courtroom while yet another man made her question her own memory. When she questioned her memory, she inevitably questioned her sanity. No fucking lawyer was going to do that to her. She would not allow it. She knew what she saw and heard that day, and she knew what she believed was the truth.

There was a time she would have let him change what she remembered, but not now. Not this. Not where her fucking son-in-law was dead and her grandchildren had lost their father. No way was some twat of a lawyer was going to convince her Adam was in no way to blame for that.

“No further questions, my Lord.”

Cold sweat ran down Nicola’s back as she was dismissed from the stand. She wasn’t entirely certain how she hadn’t taken a meltdown right there in front of everyone; her legs wobbled underneath her and her jaw trembled. Aware that she must look like shit, Nicola left the room as quickly as she could.

The grief she had managed to avoid feeling hit her like a wrecking ball in the stomach. The fear that she was losing her husband to his demons crushed her into the ground. The worry that her children, her beautiful children, would never be okay again twisted her heart into knots. Being strong, though she did it out of love, was exhausting. Terrifying. Lonely. She was so alone, left with her broken heart and her fear and her regret and everything she had always dreaded. Everything so familiar, and everything she wished she had never known.

Her back against she cold wall, she sank to the floor in the halls of Glasgow High Court. The wail of every ounce of pain in her heart, that one cry she had never allowed to leave her, echoed in the corridor.

If she’d had any sense at all, she wouldn’t have let it brew this long. She would have let this despair out before now. She’d have followed the advice she so often gave to everyone about whom she gave a single flying fuck: don’t hold it in, for it only decays, and you shall rot with it.

Sometimes, love was enough to make Nicola keep it to herself until she broke. She made that sacrifice so she could care for her family when they needed her most. And really, she had done it knowingly. Some days, she had felt it bubbling up, almost until it leaked out of the pores of her skin, but she had forced it down, back to her very core so it could rot.

Someone sat down on the floor next to her. Nicola’s face was still buried into her knees, but she felt a person brush against her arm. When she eventually did lift her head, it was Bella who sat next to her. Bella Whyte, who was hard and coarse and brutal and frightening, was the one who came after Nicola. A shot of resentment hit Nicola when she remembered that, really, this was the duty of her husband, not her stepdaughter. Bella had enough of her own pain without dealing with Nicola’s too, and she had no obligation to. Malcolm married Nicola, and so took this job on, but it seemed that support could only flow in one direction between them at the moment.

All the rot and the decay spewed into Nicola’s chest, filling her lungs until she began to drown in the dirt. Was she drowning? Or was it her mind playing tricks on her? Trying to convince her that the world was ending so she could give up? Give up without guilt?

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” Bella said quietly. “This whole thing…it’s fucking horrendous. I hate it, too.”

“I don’t know if I made things better or worse,” Nicola sobbed. “It was like he was trying to convince me I was lying.”

“You weren’t lying.”

“I know that. I know…”

“Then what’s the fucking matter with you?”

Too embarrassed to admit she had let her emotions fester, Nicola said, “I suppose I just don’t interview well. I never did – why would it be any different in a courtroom?”

Bella laughed. That surprised Nicola, that she could laugh even after the people in the next room debated whether or not her husband was murdered. She was so robust. So able for life and loss and love. She was good at everything Nicola failed at. “Well, aye, but I can promise you were more convincing in there than you are when a journalist interviews you.”

Nicola gave a teary smile; even she could appreciate the truth in that comparison.

Despite that smile, the tears would not stop. She could not stop crying. It was as if someone had broken the leaky tap and let it all out, and now it couldn’t be turned off. “Look, no matter what comes of this trial, we _will_ be okay,” Bella said forcefully. “Adam could walk and we’d be fine, Nicola. You know that. We’re solid. We always _are_ fine. Nothing has ever got the better of you, has it? Not really. You always get back up, and so do I. That’s why we’re the heads of the family. Dad probably thinks he’s in charge, but he’s not. _We_ are in control of what happens to this family.”

“That’s optimistic to the point of foolishness, Bella. We don’t know what will become of us, or the kids, or Malcolm, or Aoife.”

“Aye, we do,” Bella insisted. “We know that we’ll guide them. They’ll follow our lead. They’re programmed to follow us.”

“Perhaps, but I’m not sure I’m programmed to lead anyone.”

“You are. You’ve led your bairns all this time. Fucking James definitely wasn’t the one who taught them to be kind or strong or brainy, was he?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Exactly. You fucking made those kids, Nicola. Don’t you ever convince yourself otherwise.” Bella took Nicola’s hand and gripped it tightly that it started to hurt her knuckles. “So we will be okay. We will raise the bairns and we will keep Dad on the rails and we will make sure Aoife is fine. But we need to look after each other, Nicola, okay? We need each other.”

Still crying, Nicola relented to it and leaned her head on Bella’s shoulder. The girl was right. She so often was, but people didn’t always acknowledge her because she was loud and furious and rough around the edges. And those were the very things that made Nicola so grateful to have her for a stepdaughter.


	8. Call Me the Devil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surrounded by five children - two teenagers, a six-year-old, a five-year-old, and a nine-month-old. Send help.

** Wednesday **

“You can,” Nicola said sternly. “You can and you fucking will, Malcolm.” She took a step towards him. “I have forgiven you your faults, and I’ve ignored your ridiculous behaviour. I’ve stood next to you while you drink and behave like a pissed off adolescent. I’ve told my kids that Dad still loves them but he’s going through some hard stuff right now. I’ve told my mother it’s not your fault. But now _I_ need you to do this. Your fucking daughter needs you to do this – how can you even consider denying her this? That girl never asks you for _anything_. Not at work, not at home, not even when she needs you more than she needs anything else in the world. And you’re going to walk away from her now, when all she’s asking is that you stand up and tell the fucking truth?!”

Malcolm seemed shocked by the outburst in their hotel room. He didn’t understand how long it had been coming. His behaviour had been unreasonable ever since Euan died. Nicola knew that; she knew he was wrong, but how often had she been wrong, and he’d never turned his back on her? People were allowed to be wrong. They were allowed their flaws and their pain and their emotions. What they were not allowed to do was knowingly bring other people to harm. Up until now, the only person Malcolm had really been hurting was himself, but now he was in serious peril of hurting his child, and Nicola would not have that happen. Bella had suffered enough as it was.

“Why’re you being such a fucking-”

“Don’t you fucking dare!” she shouted. “I’m not being anything! I’m trying to do what’s best, for Bella and for you! Because if you don’t get up there and tell your version of how it happened, you’ll never forgive yourself! I _know_ you, Malcolm. You always fucking forget that!”

He fell silent, like he didn’t quite know how to respond. It wasn’t a common occurrence, this protectiveness of her family that came out in rage. It usually came out in tears, and that was only if she managed not to turn it inwards, which, admittedly, was not often.

Marriage to Malcolm had taught her that anger wasn’t inherently bad. All too often anger was completely justifiable. It had use and value and passion and concern and care…but James had her believe anger only served to fuel violence and lies. And this anger was definitely fucking justifiable. She just had to direct it into a useful place. That was the trick. That was what distinguished anger from abuse.

“So you can call me the fucking Devil if you want – I really couldn’t care less just now – but you can get dressed, eat breakfast, and go to fucking court!” she finished, exhaling sharply.

The talking-to left Malcolm glowering under his eyebrows at her, but that didn’t bother her. He did that when he knew she was right and didn’t like it. There was a certain kind of satisfaction she got from getting under his skin, especially when he needed the wake-up call.

She was be damned if she was going to suffer like she did yesterday only for Malcolm to shirk his responsibility. That was not going to happen. If she and Bella had to do this then so did he. In the interests of fairness, if nothing else, it was only right that Malcolm do what was asked of him.

Unable to say anything else of use to him but sure if she did speak she would only inflame the situation, Nicola left the room while he got himself ready and presentable. She met Bella downstairs for breakfast, though she didn’t think she could eat anything. Coffee was about all she could stomach, so she chose not to push her luck.

“How’s dad?” Bella asked.

“I just shouted at him,” admitted Nicola, “so he’s in our room getting his arse in gear.”

Bella’s smile was grim; Nicola knew that she was wondering whether or not her father really was able to do what she needed him to. After seeing him this morning, she had to confess she had her own doubts on that front. She might have told him to pull himself together, but she knew what lay ahead and knew he might crumble in front of everyone. If he did, then Nicola would have to pick up the pieces. That was her job as his wife. But she would not allow him to crumble before even trying.

“If he doesn’t show up, the whole thing collapses.”

“I know. That’s why I made damn sure he knows he must do this.”

And he did go. He stood up and he answered the questions that were asked of him. He bore up fairly well until Adam’s lawyer started. It was the same line Nicola had answered to – could it be that someone else caused Euan’s death? Was he sure that Adam had started the fight? Could the drinking have been what caused the argument?

“No,” Malcolm said. His tone was firm and calm but Nicola knew her husband and could tell he was close to snapping. “No, Adam Crichton opened his mouth and spouted a load of racist rubbish. _That_ caused an argument. I walked away from him and danced with my wife. The next thing I knew, Euan was walking away from him and Adam was calling him a ‘filthy mink.’ Adam hit him and I went to intervene.”

“Intervene, Mr. Tucker, or fan the flames?”

Nicola’s breath caught in her throat; anywhere outside of a courtroom, Malcolm would have raged and sworn, and the last thing Nicola needed was to have her husband in trouble for his conduct in court. “I was sticking up for my son-in-law. That’s what family does.”

“Is it true that your anger management issues have caused problems in your life? For instance, didn’t you punch a colleague in the face at a party conference?”

The prosecuting lawyer stood up. “Objection, my Lord. I don’t see how this is relevant to the case being tried here.”

Adam’s lawyer said, “The answer will speak to the character of this witness, my Lord.”

The judge took a moment to think. “I’ll allow it,” he said, “but know you are toeing a very fine line here.”

“Yes,” Malcolm said through gritted teeth. “It was foolish and reactionary, and I have since made amends with that colleague.” Nicola noted that what he said was technically true, though Glenn would probably argue that the apology had not really been made in the spirit of reconciliation.

“I see. And is it true that you accosted your wife while visiting your daughter, and your stepdaughter felt forced to step in?”

Nicola froze. How could they know about that? But even as she asked herself, she realised that Verity must have known about it, since it was Annie who talked some sense into Malcolm. And if Verity knew, Adam knew. “I didn’t accost her. We had an argument and it got a bit heated. Happens with every couple.”

“And you hit your wife’s then-husband in a supermarket, didn’t you?”

“He was going to hurt Nicola so I stopped him! He already had her black and blue, and he stabbed her with a kitchen knife! I think you’ll find _he_ was the one who was arrested and charged with attempted murder. Or was I supposed to stand aside and let him assault the mother of his children in front of them?”

Just as suddenly as the subject had been approached, it was abandoned; though Nicola knew the circumstances of every one of those incidents (admittedly, the incident with Glenn was entirely down to Malcolm’s foul temper), there was no context given. To an outsider, Malcolm might now look like a hot-headed lunatic.

“You said, Mr. Tucker, that you were defending your son-in-law, but Mr. Crichton is your brother-in-law, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“So why defend your son-in-law when your brother-in-law is in as much trouble?”

“Because I can’t stand the idiot!” Malcolm spat. He’d finally lost his temper. Nicola leaned forward and put her forehead on her hand. “He goes against everything I work for – he represents the lowest order of moronic, bigoted thugs! Always got his mouth open and his mind closed! He’s denser than month-old custard, for God’s sake!”

“Malcolm, no,” Nicola murmured under her breath.

“So you admit you’ve held a long-standing dislike for Mr. Crichton since he married your sister?”

Malcolm briefly looked over at Nicola; she gave him a look that she hoped reminded him that he had to tell the truth, whether it looked good or not. “Yes,” he grudgingly said. “I’ve never liked Adam very much, but I was always civil for my sister’s sake.”

“Until the day in question, when you got into an altercation with your brother-in-law?”

“An altercation he started,” Malcolm said harshly.

Adam’s lawyer’s expression was almost smug. It had been the plan the entire time, to force Malcolm to admit he hated Adam. “No further questions, my Lord.”

Outside, Malcolm seemed to know the potential consequence of what he had said, but he remained silent. He apologised to Bella, kissed Nicola on the cheek, and he left. He did not say where he was going; the look on his face told Nicola that trying to keep him near was pointless.

She watched him leave, a churning in her stomach telling her that she should have dragged him back to her side. However, he was a grown man and therefore free to make his decisions, even if they were mistakes. All she could do was try to put him back together whenever he inevitably shattered himself. Bella seemed to know that much too, because she put her hand on Nicola’s shoulder and said, “He needs his space. He always has, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah, but sometimes I think it does him more damage than good to be on his own when he’s like this.”

With court dismissed for the day, there was little for Nicola and Bella to do but wander the streets of Glasgow together, for Nicola could think of nothing worse than sitting in that room alone, thinking of all the things that had gone wrong. As they sat on bench in George Square, coffees in hand, Nicola stared into the grey sky. There were times – usually on days like these – she wondered what the fucking hell she had been thinking when she married Malcolm Tucker. Was she a masochist? She knew what he was like; she had worked with him long enough to know his bedside manner was generally fucking horrendous. And then Bella had come along and completely fucked him up for a while. Not that Bella was in any way to blame for that. Generations of lies and secrets had meant she had genuinely had no clue Malcolm was related in any way to her.

Then there was the side to Malcolm that Nicola could not help but adore. He took care of her children without a second thought. After years under James’ rule, they had managed to trust Malcolm, which could not have happened if there was something fundamentally wrong with him. She firmly believed that children had a sense of who was safe and who was dangerous, and they had always been wary of James Murray.

Bella placed her hand on Nicola’s wrist. “What’re you thinking about?”

“Your father,” Nicola sighed. “He’s a fucking nightmare sometimes.”

“Don’t I know it,” Bella laughed sharply. “Where do you think he’s gone?”

“Who knows? Probably some grubby old pub on the southside.”

“Your middle-class personality is showing, Nicola,” Bella sniggered as she elbowed Nicola in the ribs.

Somehow, in all the stress, while Malcolm was missing and they were in the middle of court proceedings, Nicola found some joy as she sat here with her stepdaughter under the dull skies of Glasgow. Home was so far away. Her children were hundreds of miles away. Her mother was not here with her. And yet Nicola was more at peace here in Scotland’s largest city than she had been for years in London, the city she had known most of her life.

Rain began to fall in the tiniest droplets, the kind one wonders if they felt on their face at all. They got to their feet and headed for shelter, discussing where best to go as the left George Square and stepped onto Queen Street, and strode past the statue of the Duke of Wellington – Nicola could not stop herself from staring at the traffic cone perched on the head of Arthur Wellesley. Bella took Nicola into a restaurant, where the warmth and the light brightened the darkness in her mind. The black was now in shades of grey, infiltrated with fragments of colour as she ate and chatted with Bella.

Sometimes, Nicola thought to herself, the only thing she could do was just to be. Exist with kindness and love, and hope for the best. Prepare for the worst, certainly, but always hope for the best.


	9. Haunted Houses

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Helloooooo! So this was supposed to be updated at the weekend but I got very sick on the way over to Leitrim and have been trying to rest ever since. I also go home on Saturday, have my driving theory test on Wednesday, and have jury duty at the beginning of April, so I'm taking all the rest I can get at the moment!

As the hours passed that night, it became apparent that Malcolm had no intention of coming back to the hotel. He wasn’t picking up his phone – not even to answer a text message – and he had told nobody where he might be. Nicola was not worried that he was unsafe in Glasgow, but she was worried he was going to get himself into trouble. She had seen that look in his eyes before. That look that told her he was looking for a battle.

“Is he answering you?” she asked Bella.

“Nope,” she sighed. “Will I call Annie?”

“I’ll do it,” Nicola said wearily. The last thing she wanted was to fight with her mother-in-law. She only hoped Annie understood the situation well enough to know why her son had gone missing.

So she did phone Annie. “Hello?” she answered the phone. As always, her accent blunted her tone, and Nicola had to remind herself she had not yet crossed Annie.

“Hi, Annie,” she said. “Listen, have you seen or heard from Malcolm this evening?”

“Naw. How?”

“He left us after court and I thought he’d be back by now, that’s all.”

Nicola held the phone away from her ear as Annie called out, “Verity, have ye’ heard fae yer brother the night?” After a moment, she came back to Nicola and told her, “Verity hasn’t heard fae him either.”

“Do you have any idea where he might have gone?” asked Nicola. As embarrassed as she was to admit it, even to herself, she was starting to panic about the potential whereabouts of her husband. More specifically, the problems he might be causing wherever he was. She knew Malcolm, and she knew what his temper was like. If someone said the wrong thing to him, God help them. She wanted to bring him back to her not so much for his sake, but for everyone else’s sake.

“Might be wi’ some of his old school pals,” Annie suggested. “There’s a pub a wee bit fae here, in Possilpark. Think it’s called the Standard. They used tae doss there.”

Possilpark…Nicola had no idea where Possilpark actually was. Somewhere in Glasgow, presumably, but she was fucked if she had to find it alone. Annie would know where it was, but she could not take an elderly woman along, especially when she didn’t know what she would find. And Verity would know, but taking her could make the problem even bigger, considering they had not spoken in months without arguing. So, it was going to have to be just Nicola and Bella. It was becoming alarmingly common for the work to be left to them these days.

“Okay, Annie, thank you,” Nicola finally said as she exhaled slowly, trying to dispel her anxiety. “I’ll call you when we find him.”

“Thanks, hen.”

Bella looked expectantly at Nicola. “Where’s Possilpark?” she asked of her stepdaughter.

“Christ, is that where he’ll be?”

“Annie seems to think so.”

“Trust Dad to pick the fucking roughest bit he can find,” grumbled Bella as she picked up the car keys from the sideboard. “What fine establishment will we find him in, then? Probably some knife-riddled, pish-stained cowp,” she continued viciously. “And he had the fucking nerve to berate me for where I used to drink when I was young!”

Suddenly, Nicola didn’t envy Malcolm whenever his daughter got her hands on him. Bella was not going to take any prisoners – that much was evident in her mutinous expression. That said, though, Bella’s expression became mutinous at the slightest provocation and always had. She was not the type to halt her outrage until a more convenient moment.

Still, they got in the car and Bella drove them to the area of Glasgow Annie had suggested. Starkly industrial-looking, it was not the sort of place she had envisioned Malcolm frequenting. Somehow he seemed more middle-class than this. But he was not, was he? She was, and he was less like her than she often acknowledged. He did not like privilege or the apathy that came from having an easy start in life. He had been dragged up by the bootstraps and it showed in his politics and his manner. While she had been growing up the child of a consultant and an accountant, never particularly spoilt but wanting for very little, Malcolm had been the teenage son of an overworked inner-city nurse and a man on the verge of suicide. Their upbringings had been so different, and yet they had both ended up broken adults.

Nicola would have argued that all adults ended up broken, but when she looked at Bella driving determinedly through Glasgow’s streets, she could not see a broken woman. In the middle of the trial of her husband’s killer, she was the search party for her father. She did not complain – though Nicola was sure Malcolm would soon learn of her displeasure – and she did not want to give him enough rope to hang himself, which is what many people would gladly do with him. And now she thought on it, Nicola made a mental note to never use that phrase in front of him.

There was the pub Annie had named, too. Bella parked the car right outside it and began to take off her seatbelt. Nicola stopped her by placing a hand on her wrist. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’ll get him. I married the man, after all.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea. It might take the two of us to make him leave.”

Even Nicola could not deny the sense in that statement, and so removed her hand from Bella’s arm and led her over the threshold of the pub.

It was quite easy to spot Malcolm in the throng. He was the loudest, the drunkest and the cockiest. Nicola knew that mask. She had seen him wear it before, and sometimes she had wondered if her husband was behind it at all. “Malcolm,” she called on him. She did not shout; her voice was only loud enough to be heard over the chatter of the pub. “Come back to the hotel with us, please.”

He held her gaze for only a moment before he turned away from her and resumed his conversation with the man next to him. Now, she knew he was not quite right at the moment, but that kind of ignorance infuriated her. And, it seemed, Bella, too. “Oi!” Bella roared. “Dinnae you fuckin’ dare blank yer wife when she mangs tae ye!”

That did get Malcolm’s attention, even though it was not how Nicola would have gone about it. He crossed the room to them, rolling his eyes at his fellow patrons as he passed them. “What’s up?” he asked.

“What’s up?” Nicola hissed. “You disappearing to a part of Glasgow you _know_ I know nothing about to get into a state where God only knows what might happen to you! That’s what’s up!”

“I’m fine!”

“How was I to know that when you wouldn’t answer the fucking phone?!”

“You’re meant to trust me, Nicola.”

“I can’t trust you,” she snapped. “Not when you’re like this. Did you trust me when I was drinking my body weight in wine and refusing to talk to anyone?” she added, challenging him with an eyebrow raised.

He gave no answer, except to look straight into her face almost pleadingly, though what he begged her for, she could not fathom.

“I thought as much.”

Bella took Malcolm by the arm, firmly but without visible anger, and steered him out of the pub. “I think we should go and see Annie,” said Nicola. “She seems to understand you better than anyone else. Of course she does – she raised you.”

Malcolm shook his head. “She won’t want to see me with all the shit that’s gone on with Adam and Verity.”

“She’s your mother, and she’s not fucking stupid. She won’t have fallen for Adam’s act.”

He stared at her. He wanted to trust her – she could see that – but whether he could risk it was something he had to decide for himself. “Nicola’s right,” Bella said. “You’ve not seen her properly since before Euan. We were supposed to go and see her then.”

“Sometimes, Malcolm, we just need our mums,” Nicola sighed. “It doesn’t matter how big or old or tough we are. Look at the number of times you’ve made me go to my mum. How is this any different?”

Something in Malcolm deflated as he said, “Up Saracen Street, turn right onto Hawthorn Road, she’s on the wee estate on the other side of the railway.” It was like agreeing to see his own mother cost him something. Perhaps pride, perhaps a sense of independence, or maybe it was that he just didn’t want Annie to have to see her son like this.

Bella drove; Malcolm was drunk – it had really hit him when he got into the car after being in the air – and Nicola knew she wasn’t great driving in places she didn’t know. And soon, they were parked in front of small houses, attached in twos, with rails around the front gardens. “You grew up here?” asked Nicola.

“We moved here when I was about nine. Lived in the old tenements before that.”

They got out the car, and Nicola led them to the house, for it was made plain in Malcolm’s face that he would not be the one to knock on the door. Annie, in her dressing gown and slippers, answered the door. “Oh, hello, Nicola, love,” she greeted her daughter-in-law with a rather tired smile. “Bella! How’re ye daein’?”

“I’m fine,” Bella said. Everyone knew better than to prod her for more information.

“Malcolm,” Annie said. “Malcolm, come in and sit down.” Her concerned tone caused Nicola to turn and look at her husband; where a few moments ago he had been almost ruddy in drink, he now resembled a corpse. Nicola took him by the hand, and they went inside towards the living room. “What’s wrong?” asked Annie.

“Mam?!” called out a voice. “Whit’s goin’ on?” Verity appeared at the foot of the stairs in her pyjamas. She, too, drained a chalky shade of white. “Oh,” she said stonily. “It’s you.” She did not look at Nicola or Bella as she said this; she only had eyes for her brother.

“I don’t want any fucking trouble,” Malcolm said. In a house full of life-long Glaswegians, it was easy to tell he had spent a long time in England. “I’m here to see my mother.”

“You’ve been here, how long? And you only want tae see her when yer pished? After you’ve just done yer best tae put my husband in the jail?!”

Nicola froze. Malcolm being Malcolm, he was sure to react to that. “Aye, well, that’s where we put murderers,” he retorted coldly. He turned his back on his sister and gave his attention to his mother. 

“Leave it oot,” Annie groaned. “Erin’s asleep up the stairs.”

Both of the Tucker children, though obviously with great displeasure, bit their tongues.

“How’re you doin’?” asked Malcolm.

“It’s been hard,” Annie said candidly, “havin’ my two weans fightin’ each other. But that’s no’ why yer here.” She reached out and pulled Malcolm down into a gentle hug. “Whatever happened that night, boy, it wasnae your fault, right? That man in the court, he’s just doin’ a job. An ugly one, aye, but it’s his job tae try and discredit you.”

Nicola smiled sadly; sometimes, even Malcolm Tucker needed his mother. And though Verity was not dealing particularly well with the idea that her husband might have killed a man, Nicola could find it in herself to feel for her. Even the worst person in the world could seem good and decent if you let love blind you to their faults. Nobody knew that better than Nicola.

That sympathy, however, did not extend to the look of sheer jealousy on Verity’s face as she watched her mother hold her brother. “You’ve got some brass neck,” she said harshly.

“What?” Malcolm snapped, releasing Annie.

“You. Comin’ in here after fuckin’ this family up time and time again,” she said. “First, you made my life a misery when we were weans. Then you run off to Skye with no contact for months. You fuck off to university and leave me to deal with _our_ grievin’ mother,” she snarled. “And now you accuse my husband of killin’ your son-in-law in a fight that never would’ve happened if you hadn’t got some Travellin’ lassie up the duff and introduced us to the sprog thirty years later!”

And before anyone could do anything about it, Bella slapped Verity hard across the face.

Verity slapped Bella.

Malcolm lunged to grab Verity, but she was quicker than he was. “You think I’m scared of you?” she laughed. The sound was terrible, like she spat poison in Nicola’s ears. “I’ve had years to get over that. All the years you were down south makin’ all the scumbag politicians fear you, I was up here on my own. And d’you know what I learnt? I learnt you’re just fuckin’ pathetic.”

Again, it was Bella who delivered the first blow. She pushed Verity backwards. Verity seized Bella, and Malcolm seized Veirty, and soon it was just a mess of limbs and shouting and swearing. Nicola’s first thought was that Erin would wake up in the noise, and so she closed the living room door.

Why the fuck did this always happen? This fucking family, all Nicola ever seemed to do was pull them off one another. And Annie, at seventy-odd years of age, could not separate her two children, never mind her granddaughter into the bargain. “Oi!” roared Nicola, all pretence of dignity out the window. Whatever this situation was, it was _not_ fucking dignified. “Cut it out!”

With the three of them fighting – though Nicola was unsure they remembered what they actually fought for at this point – it was difficult to sort through who was doing and saying what. “Come a-fucking-head!” a woman roared; Nicola could only guess that was Verity.

“Quit it!” Annie bellowed. “There’s none o’ the three o’ ye too old fur a skelp roon’ the fuckin’ lug!”

Bella froze. She stepped back from her father and her aunt and looked at Annie like she only just remembered the old woman was even there. Her expression of guilt and embarrassment told Nicola a story of a young woman who had started to lose herself. She never normally would have done that in front of Annie, and Nicola knew that.

“The fuck am I doin’?” whimpered Bella. “The fuck?!”

Annie took Bella’s hand. “It’s okay. Yer aw’right.”

But Malcolm and Verity remained locked in their wrestling match; Verity was far stronger than Nicola would have guessed. Either that, or Malcolm’s inebriation was working against him. Nicola grabbed Malcolm by the upper arm, but he threw her off without even thinking about it and continued to fight his own sister. “Bloody hell, where’s Aoife when you need her?!” growled Nicola.

It was like Malcolm was in a trance. He didn’t seem to feel her touch or hear her voice, and if he did, it had no effect on the venom he apparently felt for his sister.

“Malcolm!” Nicola called out. “Stop!”

Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Bella broke away from Annie and took Verity by surprise. Before Nicola quite knew what she’d done, Bella had Verity face down on the floor with her arm trapped behind her back. Though obviously unhurt, Verity was practically foaming at the mouth with rage. Nicola took her opportunity. She stood in front of Malcolm, but he still didn’t see her. He looked right through her so he could stare murderously at Verity. Nicola could almost see the red descend over her husband’s eyes as he tried to manhandle Nicola out of his way.

“Malcolm, no!” she snarled; it was all she could do to hold him at bay. “Malcolm!” His grip on her shoulder tightened painfully; there was so little that Nicola could do to reason with him.

Nicola slapped Malcolm hard across the face. Like Bella had done, he stood still so suddenly that he might have been frozen in time. His gaze fell upon Nicola and she saw him come back to himself. His hands released her. “Nicola, I-” he began, but Nicola though better of letting him speak.

“Bella, take your dad out to the car, please,” she asked of her stepdaughter, though she did not stop searching those bright blue eyes before her, trying to find her husband.

Verity was soon on her feet, shooting her brother looks that could have killed a corpse, and Bella took Malcolm by the arm. Before she took Malcolm from the room, Bella turned to face Annie, her eyes far too bright. “I’m so sorry, Annie.”

“It’s no’ your fault, lass.”

Nicola sat down on the sofa with her face in her hands.

“Verity,” Annie said quietly, “go and check on Erin. Gie’s a minute, eh?”

Verity nodded her head. She stopped at the door and turned back to look at them. “Nicola, I’m-” she began, but she didn’t finish saying what she was. Evidently, it was too much for her to say, and she left them.

Annie sat next to Nicola and rubbed her back gently. “Send him back to London,” she said. This suggestion surprised Nicola, and she lifted her face from her hands to look at her mother-in-law. “The sleeper leaves Central Station in an hour. Put him on it. He can’t be here. It’s no’ good for him.”

“But Bella needs-”

“You. She needs you. You’re the best parent she’s got just now. I take it her mother’s takin’ no part in any of it?” asked Annie.

“Bernadette has her own way of dealing with things,” Nicola allowed, trying to be diplomatic about Bella’s mother. “But she won’t come within a million miles of a courthouse.”

Annie nodded. “So she’s got you. That’s all she needs. Nobody needs their father when the father is bein’ like Malcolm is. So take him – just him and the clothes on his back – and send him back to London.”

Defeated, Nicola nodded. Annie gently kissed her head.

So that was what they did. Bella drove to Glasgow Central Station. Nicola went in and bought a ticket for the sleeper to Euston. At the ticket barrier, she stretched up and kissed her husband. “You understand why I’m sending you home, don’t you?” she asked him. “I just want you to be safe, and you aren’t safe here. You can’t think straight and it’s too easy for you to get yourself in trouble.”

“I know,” he said.

“I’ll call Mum and let her know you’re coming home in the morning, okay?”

He nodded his head.

“I love you.”

He just nodded again.

As Malcolm went through the barrier and onto the platform, Nicola felt a gaping hole open up in her chest. She understood. She finally understood her husband’s biggest problem: whether it was Glasgow, or London, or Portree, he could not be at peace where he could see his past float around him. To put him in these places was like to drop him into a haunted house and expect him not to be scared of the dark. The one difference between having him here in Glasgow and having him in London was that Victoria was in London and, for whatever reason, Malcolm usually listened to her when she spoke.

The only answer was to get this horror show in Glasgow over with, with only Bella next to her, and then consider where in the world this family was meant to be.


	10. Stepchildren

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus, the lack of updates is appalling. It's symptomatic lack of time I've had in the last month. Between my granny's manic dementia episodes (we went drove 20 miles at eleven at night because she was losing her shit at not being able to get her watch off), my grandfather's ridiculous behaviour and his COPD episodes, my granny falling and breaking her arm (for which I'm getting the blame), and my mum, my aunt and my uncle at each other's throats, it's been a fucking nightmare. I'm literally counting the days until I can fuck off back to Ireland. Christ only knows when I'll have time to add anything else to this.

“In the matter of indictment one, has the jury reached its final verdict?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“What is that verdict?”

“Not guilty.”

“In the matter of indictment two, has the jury reached its final verdict?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“What is that verdict?”

“Not proven.”

“In the matter of indictment three, has the jury reached its final verdict?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“What is that verdict?”

“Not proven.”

“In the matter of indictment four, has the jury reached its final verdict?”

“Yes, my Lord.”

“What is that verdict?”

“Guilty.”

The judge nodded solemnly. “Thank you for your service on this jury; we are grateful to you for your performance of a vital civic duty. You are now dismissed and are free to leave this court.”

The jury silently left. Nicola tried to understand what had just happened; indictment four had been the charge of grievous bodily harm, had it not? Or whatever the Scots called it, anyway. The first had been murder, the second manslaughter (not that the Scots called it that; Nicola was beginning to think they enjoyed being different from England), and the third had been racially aggravated assault. And not guilty of indictment one but indictments two and three are not proven? What did that mean?

Her mind raced. The words chased each other in her mind as she did her best to translate the Scottish High Court into words her brain could understand.

“The accused will stand.”

Adam got to his feet in the dock.

“Mr. Adam Crichton, you have been acquitted on the matters of indictment one: the murder of Mr. Euan Whyte; indictment two: culpable homicide of Mr. Euan Whyte; indictment three: racially aggravated assault to the severe injury to Mr. Euan Whyte. You have, however, been found guilty on indictment four: assault to the severe injury of Mr. Euan Whyte.” He took a moment and set his papers to one side. “I must add, Mr. Crichton, that these acquittals do not excuse your conduct on the night in question. Your uncouth behaviour resulted in serious harm to another man. I hope you understand the trauma you have inflicted onto your own family from the moment you assaulted this man to our current position as you stand here in this courtroom. This is an ordeal for the family of any victim, even more so when there are young children involved. For the benefit of the English members of the victim’s family, this charge may be equated to the charge of grievous bodily harm south of the border – be in no misunderstanding of the seriousness of the conviction, Mr. Crichton. Your defence of provocation has been disproved in this matter, and it has been confirmed to my satisfaction that Mr. Whyte walked away from the dispute before you pursued him. I keep in mind, too, that you have a young daughter, though I wonder what kind of role model you must be to her; I must only hope she has law-abiding adults in her life to emulate. Though this is your first recorded offence, it is nonetheless a serious one. I have seen nothing in the way of genuine remorse from you, either. Indeed, Dr. Beaton testified that you showed no interest in trying to help the victim after it was evident he was seriously injured. You have refused to testify in this trial, which does not place you in a flattering light. Taking all of this into consideration, it is my ruling that you shall serve a custodial sentence of thirty-three months in prison.”

Stone cold, Nicola found her feet. How could the jury have decided he didn’t cause Euan’s death? How could they doubt the racism at play?

She watched as Adam was taken into custody. She stood as the judge rose and left the court. She filed out. As they left, she whispered to Bella, “What’s the difference between ‘not guilty’ and ‘not proven?’”

“The media – and everybody else – takes ‘not proven’ to mean that they reckon he did it, but the evidence isn’t concrete enough, or it sticks in their throats to say he’s not guilty,” she explained flatly. Her voice was empty, like the last of her soul had been drained out of her. “So, they’re convinced he didn’t murder Euan but they don’t really want to say it wasn’t necessarily culpable homicide, even though they can’t say it _was_ culpable homicide.”

“Bloody hell,” Nicola sighed, her mind trying to soak in what she had just been told. “You never make it simple up here, do you?”

Bella didn’t answer. She had gone the same way as her father: quiet. Her face pale beneath her freckles, her eyes glassy like she didn’t quite comprehend where she was, she still made the world believe she was in control.

But Nicola could see Bella was not in control. She was going through exactly the same thought process as Nicola, except that it was magnified. It must have been searing through Bella to know that the justice system had given her husband’s killer one of the most lenient punishments it could. Thirty-three months in prison was a month less than James had been given, _after_ he had a third taken off because he had pled guilty. Why was Euan’s life and safety worth less than hers?

At the front doors, they found they were not yet to get any peace to just exist for a moment. No, there were journalists waiting to bombard them the second they stepped through that door.

Bella was hesitating. She stood at the door, but she did not proceed. She looked at Nicola, who didn’t have the first clue what Bella needed from her. However, whatever it was she needed, she must have found it, because she opened the door.

It was a bizarre moment. Nicola didn’t know what to do. Despite all her maternal compulsions, this was not her child. This was her husband’s child, and she had sent him back to London. Was she meant to take over like she would if this had been Ella? Or let Bella do as she pleased and leave her to navigate this without interference? What was she supposed to do for the best?

And it was then that she truly understood the relationship between them. Certain things suddenly made sense: the lack of contact between Bella and her stepfather and stepbrothers, the wedge between Bella and Bernadette, the willingness Bella had to lean on Nicola, the expectation Bella had of Malcolm to look after Nicola’s children.

Regardless of the world of class and culture that separated them, she and Bella had the same understanding of what it meant to be a parent. Stepchildren were no different to biological children. They needed their parents – all of them, no matter how many they had, no matter how old they were. And when the world came crashing down at their feet and they had nowhere left to go, they needed their stepparents as much as they needed their actual parents.

Bella had never looked so alone. Both of her birth parents were absent. From what Nicola had gathered about her relationship with her stepfather, the two were not exactly close. And, of course, her husband was gone. That left Nicola. She was here. She was here and she was watching her stepdaughter fracture before her very eyes as she was questioned outside of Glasgow High Court. There was so little she could do that it tore her heart to shreds. All she could do was the one thing she knew she was absolutely useless at. She could step up and relieve Bella of the burden of speaking to the press. These were the things she did for her children.

“How do you feel about the verdict, Mrs. Whyte?”

Bella floundered. She dithered and swallowed her words as Nicola so often did. She was not ready to speak – at least not without anger. Nicola took her by the wrist, silently telling her she could step down. “We are rather disappointed with the verdict,” Nicola replied calmly, “particularly that the jury did not see or understand the racial aggravation that we have seen from Mr. Crichton on more than this one occasion.”

“But Mr. Crichton _was_ found guilty of assault to serious injury,” a reporter called out. “Is that some consolation?”

“Euan is dead,” Nicola said sharply. “In our eyes, he is dead because Mr. Crichton chose to start a fight with him. He is responsible for what happened to Euan, no matter what the courts say.”

“Going back to your previous comment, why do you think the jury didn’t agree with you that the incident was fuelled by racism?”

Nicola paused a moment, but eventually said, “They have not lived with it. _I_ have only lived with it through my husband’s side of the family. There’s a fundamental prejudice against Travelling people up and down this country. Both attitudes and the law must change to prevent attacks like this one from happening.”

“Are you saying you would like to see a change in the law that explicitly protects Travellers and Gypsies?”

“That is exactly what I am saying. We cannot have a repeat of this. I am well aware that if the victim had not been the Scottish Secretary’s husband, the whole incident would have been swept under the carpet. These people are not just sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives. They are simply human beings. That is how we are meant to relate to one another. Our worth and right to protection in law should not depend on who we are or who we know. Human beings are equal. That’s the point so many people don’t seem to understand.”

The air shifted as she spoke, like the world would never be the same. She had stood for something. For someone. She had done what she always tried to avoid and shown a public allegiance to a specific section of society. She may well have just thrown herself and her career under the bus, but that seemed so petty, so insignificant, right now. After all, what was her career when compared to the greater good? The safety of thousands of people was far more important, especially when the courts had just sent out a message that one might just about get away with killing someone if they were of a certain ethnicity.

“We would appreciate some privacy at this time,” Nicola continued firmly. “Thank you.”

With that they walked away from the courthouse and down the street towards the car park. Bella stalked ahead of Nicola, which, considering she was about five inches shorter than Nicola, was quite an achievement. “Bella!” Nicola called out. “Slow down!”

But Bella did not slow her pace. Left with no other option, Nicola ran until she was in front of Bella and blocked her path, sure she looked like a penguin in splints as she tried to run in high heels. “Fuck off, Nicola,” Bella snarled. Though her tone was harsh, her voice was brittle. She was near the end of her supply of composure. Nicola knew that feeling all too well.

“No,” she said simply. “I won’t fuck off, Bella.”

“I mean it, leave me the fuck alone!”

Like she had seen with Malcolm, grief had somehow transformed itself into rage before her very eyes. These moments were the ones that showed Bella to well and truly be her father’s daughter. “I am not leaving you alone to wander the streets of Glasgow in this state. I wouldn’t do it to any of the other kids, and I won’t do it to you.”

Bella tried to skirt past Nicola, but Nicola caught her by the arm.

“Let go,” she hissed.

With all the love she could find, Nicola stared Bella in the face, refusing to falter under that bright blue glare, and replied, “I can’t do that.”

There was no way to know what it was about that answer that got through the dented armour Bella so proudly wore. Maybe it was the fact that someone still cared about her, or maybe it was that Nicola loved her enough to look her in the eye and defy her. Bella shook her head; did she really think that was going to halt the impending crash? That would not even delay it.

It was coming. Nicola could already see it approaching.

To watch it unfold in front of her was excruciating. Bella’s face twisted slightly as she tried to force back her grief, as she tried to prevent herself from breaking down right in the middle of Glasgow. Water flooded in front of her frighteningly blue eyes. Her body began to tremble, and not because of the Scottish weather. “Leave me,” she said once more. It was no longer an order; it was a plea. Rather than give Bella what she said she wanted, Nicola took her hands.

The first sob left Bella. It seemed she plummeted into the Earth when she fell forwards into Nicola’s arms. “Can’t do that,” Nicola murmured again into Bella’s ear. “I’ve got you, Bella. I’ve always got you.”


	11. Freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The events of the past week have influenced the turn this chapter took. It was always going to end where it does - just the course altered itself a bit. I'm going to the funeral of yet another cousin next week. She hanged herself in Budgie's garage, only a few months older than I am. And I've fucking had enough.
> 
> *makes mental note not to write while furious*

“This is appalling,” Nicola whispered under her breath.

Reading these studies, her stomach twisted into knots of disgust. She had not expected them to make pleasant reading – knowing Bella and Euan had well and truly knocked that naivety out of her – but she had not expected the inequality to be this starkly obvious.

The average life expectancy was around ten years lower than the rest of the country. They were more likely to die in infancy. More likely to miscarry or suffer a stillbirth.

Nearly half reported a chronic cough. Sixty-five percent reported cases of asthma.

Less than half attended school after completing primary school. The average age for leaving school: 12.7 years.

They were more likely to suffer addiction and mental health issues.

Four percent of the prison population, despite being less than one percent of the national population. Nearly half of those felt unsafe in prison. Up to forty percent victimised by fellow prisoners and staff for their race.

Thirty-nine percent suffered from anxiety – three times the comparison group of settled people.

Suicide rate: six times than the national average.

 _The suicide rate for Gypsies and Travellers was six times the national average_.

And yet the likes of Ben fucking Swain called them cockroaches. They were killing themselves and he was sitting in a government office, calling them cockroaches. Saying it was fair game to kill them in a pub brawl. And they were _killing themselves_.

Nicola could see why. They were alone in the world, apart from each other; the problem there was that being holed up together constantly couldn’t be good for their own relationships and frame of mind. Their culture decimated by the outside world, only for them to be discriminated against whenever they had to deal with that world. She was willing to bet her annual salary that people didn’t give a shit about the Equality Act when it came to Travellers. So what were they to do? Hide who they are? Tread on eggshells so as not to have to endure the inevitable prejudice?

She started an email. She copied in all the Cabinet ministers. Even the Prime Minister. She quoted what she had just read. She explained the situation they faced. She asked what they could do, as a government, to protect these people from harm. To try and help them access the things they needed. To try and prevent or at least minimise the discrimination and racism they faced.

The replies came over the course of a week – from those of her colleagues who bothered to email her back, anyway.

_They’re already protected under the Equality Act. That’s good enough for them._

_It’s only a tiny fraction of people. There are more important things going on._

_Don’t add to this department’s list of problems._

_Travellers aren’t worth any of the budget. They don’t comply when councils try to rehouse them._

The resounding message: “We don’t fucking care.”

Didn’t they understand that Travellers didn’t want to be stuffed into council houses to be tormented by the four walls around them? Bella’s reaction to being on the road was enough to demonstrate that. Didn’t they understand that people didn’t think of Travellers as worthy of protection under their sacred fucking Equality Act? Didn’t they understand that too many people regarded the term “Traveller” not as a statement of ethnicity, but as a permanent black mark against their name?

To go home that week and watch Malcolm still trying to keep his head out of the bottle, to see him so defeated by another death, only served to make Nicola wonder what the fuck she was doing these days. Malcolm’s job had such a hold on him that even if he saw what the Cabinet thought of his daughter and grandchildren’s right to live freely, he might still remain. He might still try and keep them in government, because he knew nothing else. It had been the core of his existence for years, keeping that godforsaken fucking party in power.

It was the following Tuesday morning that Nicola decided she could not deal with this anymore. She could not be part of a government that did not care about human life when the evidence was right there in front of them.

There were better ways to make a difference.

She wrote the letter. As she did so, she contemplated the likely knock-on effect; even she was not stupid enough to believe Bella would not follow suit, and Malcolm had warned them more than once what would ensue if that happened.

In her letter, Nicola held nothing back. She quoted the replies she got to her concerns and her requests to even talk about this problem she wanted to solve. She outlined the way her colleagues reacted to the idea that these people were killing themselves at such an alarming rate – at best, with apathy, and at worst, with contempt.

That farce of a trial had ignited everything Nicola had sworn she would keep dampened; she had tried to promise herself that she would not let whatever emotion it stirred to affect her work. But this _was_ her work. She might not have initially chosen her position, but her work was in a government office, where one of her remits was improving social equality between the majority and the minority. She was not being allowed the freedom to do that job. The people around her didn’t want her to make any progress, and it was infuriating. It was disheartening.

Nicola couldn’t live with being constantly disheartened anymore. It wasn’t good enough. Not for her, her children or her husband. Their lives were worth more than this. They needed peace, and contentment, and space and time to heal. That was exactly what none of them had been permitted since Katie died.

All that justification, however, made it no easier to knock on the door of her husband’s office.

“What?!” he bellowed.

Nicola stepped into the office. She tried not to look guilty or apologetic – she was neither, but her face tended to take the shape it thought other people wanted to see. She handed him the letter without a word.

Malcolm read it. She watched the panic and anger rise in him; she’d been expecting that. She knew her husband well enough to know that her resignation would anger him, at least until he came to terms with it. “Do you fucking realise what you’ve just done, Nicola?!” he raged at her. “You’ll start World War fucking Three in the fucking government with this!”

“Honestly, Malcolm, I’m not sure I care,” she said calmly. “If their response to me – not to mention the things they’ve said to Bella – recently is anything to go by, they don’t care enough about anything other than themselves to stand up and do their fucking jobs.”

Her anger, the type that mirrored Malcolm’s at least, had long since diminished, to be replaced with disdain for her colleagues and their unwillingness to confront their own racial biases.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” she explained. “This job, Malcolm, it consumes my life. _Our_ lives. It crushes our morals. We have to ignore our own set of values and ethics for the good of the party. No party is worth that, especially one that’s made it clear they don’t give a shit about anything but keeping themselves in power.”

The cogs in Malcolm’s head had begun to creak to life; Nicola could see them turning behind his eyes. “If you do this, Bella will, too.”

“I know.”

“And if Bella leaves, we’ll probably end up with a fucking general election.”

“I won’t contest it.”

“What?”

“The party will just have to find somebody else. I’m not fighting another election.”

“Then what the fuck are you gonnae do?!” he demanded, his tone heated as it dawned on him that Nicola knew exactly what she was bringing about.

“I’m going to find a job where I can do something worthwhile, without all the obstacles this place likes to put up for anyone who wants to change anything.”

“The fucking position you’re putting me in, Nic’la…”

“I know,” she said simply. “You’re just like the rest of us. I’ve made my decision. I’ll hold off on making any further plans until you’ve decided what you want to do. Just know, Malcolm, there’s a whole world outside of this place, and we don’t know half of it.”

He didn’t give her an answer. She knew better than to expect one now. Though she had not taken this decision lightly, Malcolm would need more time than she had. Perhaps when Bella made her decision, it might sway him. That was what Nicola was hoping would happen, anyway. Only time would tell.

* * *

“Sophie, don’t forget your PE kit!” Nicola called up the stairs.

She went back to the kitchen; when she heard her stepdaughter’s voice, she turned the volume of the radio up.

“It has been a privilege to serve as Scottish Secretary, and as the Member of Parliament for Ross, Skye and Lochaber,” Bella Whyte said. “However, the time has come for me to move on from this chapter of my career. I feel my talents would be best utilised where red tape does not stop me from helping those people who need it. Nothing will change while we’re all holding ourselves back for the sake of appearances. This government’s show of progressive values and its interest in equality does not go deep enough, and I cannot continue to work for a party who have blocked so many attempts to protect those in society who are easier to ignore. It’s time for me to do what is right, not what is easy. I thank my constituents for the opportunity to represent them at Westminster, and I hope my successor may continue the work I have tried to get off the ground.”

Ella passed the milk carton to Nicola, so that she could put it back in the fridge. “What happens now?” she asked.

“I’m not sure, love,” Nicola admitted. “There’ll probably be a general election.”

“No, I mean, what happens to us?”

“We have to wait and see what your dad wants to do. Once we know that, we can sit down with your granny and Bella and figure out where we go from here,” she told her daughter. “But whatever we do, Ella, we’ll do it together. Nobody will be left behind, alright?”

To Nicola’s surprise, Ella reached up and hugged her tight. “Thank you for trying to stand up for Euan and Bella,” she said quietly. “Somebody had to say it. I’m glad it was my mum.” Taken aback, Nicola held Ella close; they did not usually share this close a relationship. Ella, for whatever her own reasons were, found it easier to confide in Malcolm most of the time. “One day, I’ll be able to start helping people.”

“You already do,” Nicola told her. She released Ella and held her gently by the shoulders. “You help me every day. You look after your brother and sister. You keep an eye on Malcolm when I can’t. Don’t think I don’t appreciate everything you do for us, Ella.”

Ella nodded her head, her eyes bright. “Yeah, but I want to do something bigger. I want to help the people who don’t get the same chances as I do. Everyone deserves a chance to be who they want to be. You taught me that.”

Nicola smiled. “Go and get your coat. We’re going to be late if we don’t move.”

As Ella left the room, Nicola realised that, really, she wasn’t such a terrible mother. Her children were kind and forward-thinking, and that certainly had not been James’ doing. That old lie, that she was a useless parent, that the kids didn’t love her, that they loved James more than they loved her, had never seemed so distant. It was an echo in a canyon: she could hear it faintly in the air, but she knew just how far away it really was.

Her mobile phone beeped. A text message, from Bella. _Meet me at the pub for lunch? Xxx_

Nicola could not help but smile slightly. It was such a normal message for a person to get from their stepchild, and yet she knew nothing about today was normal. Everything was changing. Change terrified Nicola; it had a way of pulling the rug from under her feet. But this change needed to happen. They needed this.

For once, they were doing something for themselves. Partly for their children, too, of course, but primarily for themselves, so that they were free to be the people they wanted to be. Today, nobody could take that away from them.


	12. Guidance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, from Ireland (thank fuck). It's been a long couple of months. A hard couple of months. This should have been typed up ages ago but I just couldn't get the time - I apologise for that!

Nicola sat down at her mother’s kitchen table, the pair of them alone; while the kids were at school, Nicola somehow had both too much and too little to do. “So, you’ve resigned,” Victoria said. There was no scorn or contempt in her voice, but Nicola knew she wanted answers. “Bella, too.”

“I can’t serve a government or a party that doesn’t care about entire races of people.”

“I know,” Victoria assured her, handing her a mug of coffee. “What about Malcolm?”

“I don’t know,” Nicola sighed heavily. “I think he agrees with us on principle, but he gets so caught up in the politics. He says with Bella gone, it’ll have to be an election. They’ll announce it later this week. If he goes now, the party is up shit creek.”

“There are more important things.”

“I know that. I think _he_ knows that. His problem is that the party is the only thing he knows like the back of his hand.”

Victoria smiled slightly; Nicola almost asked why, but thought better of it. Whatever her mother thought of her husband was between the two of them.

“What will you do if he does resign?”

“I spoke to Bella about this. We both want to move out of London. Bella likes the idea of Moray or Aberdeenshire.” She watched Victoria, bracing for the objections that were sure to come. They never did. “I think the kids might like country life better. They need the space to heal and they won’t get that here,” she continued.

Victoria’s expression was inscrutable.

Though somewhat terrified to ask, Nicola said, “What do you think?”

Victoria stared intensely at her for a moment; Nicola shifted in her chair and picked up her coffee mug. “I think you need to do your best for your children.”

“That’s not an answer, Mum,” she said sternly, just as Victoria used to when Nicola answered a question with “because” when she was a child.

Pausing to lean against the kitchen counter, Victoria finally confessed, “I would miss you all.” Nicola could tell she was treading with immense caution. “But I’d know you’re safe and happy, and that matters more.”

Nicola fell silent. Was it fair to leave her mother behind now, after years of Victoria looking after her and the rest of the family? It sounded so callous a plan, to take all her grandchildren to the other end of the country. It was so far – up to nine hours on trains, and longer to drive.

“I don’t know what to do for the best,” Nicola said quietly. “I want a calmer life for Malcolm and the children, but I don’t want to abandon you, either. That would be so unfair. You’d get to spend a fraction of the time with the kids that you do now, for a start.”

“That’s not as important as knowing they’re well,” Victoria said firmly.

“I know, but…”

“But what?”

“It always seems to be you who gets the shit end of the deal. Ever since I first married James, you given so much and put up with such utter bollocks, and taken nothing in return.”

“I’m your mother, Nicola. That’s my job.”

Nicola found herself gazing into the floor. What would she do without her mum living so close? They had never lived more than ten miles apart. Could Nicola really live up in Scotland, with such distance between them?

“I’ll go too.”

Nicola looked up. She had not been expecting that; it threw all the prepared arguments and speeches out the window. “What?” she asked, stunned.

“I’ll go with you to Scotland.”

“You don’t have to do-”

“Think about it,” Victoria interrupted her. “I don’t even want to spend my retirement in London. It’s cramped and frankly quite dirty. Rural Scotland sounds much more appealing.”

“Mum…”

“Unless you’d rather I didn’t,” she added hastily. “I’d completely understand if you wanted a clean break.”

“No, it’s not that!” Nicola told her. “It’s just that I don’t want to disrupt your life.”

Victoria laughed; Nicola frowned at her. “I think that ship sailed many moons ago, dear,” she chuckled.

“Exactly! I’ve caused you far too much hassle as it is, without dragging you up into the Scottish hills.”

“What’s keeping me here?” Victoria reasoned. “Your father is dead. I’m retired. I spend most of my time either with my family or on my own, which is just how I like it,” she added quickly, before Nicola could butt in. “I’d like to come, if only to live somewhere clean and quiet for once.”

Nicola smiled wryly. She knew exactly what Victoria was doing; she was used to it, after forty-odd years. Victoria was making her decision about herself, so that Nicola didn’t feel she was uprooting her. “If that’s what you want to do, Mum, I won’t stop you.”

Victoria took Nicola’s hand and squeezed gently.

“Of course,” Nicola said, “this is all fine and good, but Malcolm hasn’t even resigned.

“He will,” replied Victoria.

She said it so firmly, with such confidence, that Nicola simply had to ask her, “How do you know?”

“Malcolm might be a royal pain in the fucking neck, but he does have a conscience, and he knows right from wrong.”

Nicola wasn’t so sure about that these days; sometimes she wondered if Malcolm was going to remain as he was just so that the routine of going to Westminster every day didn’t break.

“I hope you’re right.”

“You need to have more faith in him, love,” Victoria said.

Nicola spluttered a little on her coffee. “Have you _seen_ how he’s been behaving, Mum?!” she said indignantly. “I had to send him back from Glasgow!”

Victoria sighed; she placed her mug on the table and sat on the chair nearest Nicola. “You didn’t see him when he came back. I did. He was lost. He _is_ lost. The drinking, the fighting, the obsession with work, it’s all his way of keeping himself afloat.”

It jarred a little to hear her mum defend Malcolm so readily. “It’s not my fault he’s lost,” she said; it was difficult to keep the note of defensiveness out of her reply.

“It’s nobody’s fault. It probably would have helped if Adam Crichton hadn’t killed his son-in-law, of course, but no-one is to blame for that but Adam. The only thing you can do is be there while he tries to find a path. Guide him if you can, but the more you force him one way or the other, the worse you’ll make things.”

“I think he wouldn’t be so bad if he hadn’t fallen out with Verity.”

“Not a lot you can do about that. Even Annie won’t be able to fix it. Malcolm and Verity need to sort that out for themselves; that can’t happen until Verity comes to terms with what her husband has done.”

“I never denied what James-”

“You’re not Verity. James is not Adam. You can’t compare yourselves.”

Nicola considered that for a moment. Maybe Victoria was right, in that – as far as Nicola knew – Adam had never harmed his wife or child. Verity and Adam’s marriage had to be very different to James and Nicola’s. But still, Verity had pulled Adam up for his racism before, so why deny it now? She supposed acknowledging it within the family was different from letting the rest of the world know about it.

Perhaps Verity simply did not want to believe Adam was capable of murder. It must have been easier to dismiss that notion if she had never been on the receiving end of his violence. That was the difference between Nicola and Verity: Nicola had known what James was because she had been tormented by him for years, but Verity could only see her otherwise normal husband being accused of taking another man’s life.

“Don’t you ever wish things could be easy? Everything is always so fucking difficult.”

“Wishful thinking doesn’t get us anywhere, does it? All it does is make us bitter for what we don’t have when we’d be happier if we were more grateful for what we do have.”

It always annoyed her when Victoria did this; her wisdom was so hard to argue against, because even Nicola knew what she said was usually right. That was most frustrating when she let Nicola see that the right thing to do wasn’t necessarily the easiest. In fact, it so rarely was. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see,” she finally murmured. “Like you said, there’s so little I can do about it, so I just have to try and steer Malcolm the right way without forcing him.”

* * *

It on was Friday that Nicola got a phone call from Malcolm. “It’s done,” he said curtly.

“What?” Nicola asked, confused as to what he was talking about.

“We’ve called the election,” he explained. “Would you meet me at St. James’ Park? In about an hour?” he asked.

This surprised Nicola, but she knew he wouldn’t ask unless there was something he felt the need to discuss in person. “Of course. I’ll just finish putting Sophie’s clothes away and then I’ll be over,” she said. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s all fine.”

Not entirely sure she trusted that answer, Nicola told him, “Okay, well, I’ll see you in a little while.”

“Okay.”

He hung up. Nicola continued folding Sophie’s clothes, but she tried to figure out what was going on. Why did she need to meet up with Malcolm? There was to be a general election, yes, but they had been expecting that since the moment she and Bella resigned. There was no need to even talk about that, never mind in person.

Years ago, she would have refused to see him alone. She would have taken Terri, Ollie or Glenn, for all the use they’d actually be. If nothing else, they were witness to whatever was said or done; she hadn’t quite trusted Malcolm not to lift his hands to her in temper. James had done it so often, and Malcolm had been such a rage-filled man, that she had half-expected a slap from him.

Now, though, she knew he wouldn’t. The one time he had been on the verge of hitting her, she knew he deeply regretted.

And so she went to St. James’ Park alone, and found Malcolm sitting on a bench with two paper cups. He gave her one and shifted over to let her sit next to him. “What’s going on?” she asked him.

“There’s gonnae be an election,” he said.

“I know. You told me already.”

“There’s two ways I can do this,” he said, staring across the park. “I can give them the most majestic fucking, or I can stay.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know the PM, Nicola,” he reminded her. “I can fucking ruin him.”

“Why would you?”

“The man’s a clusterfuck of ignorance and idiocy,” he said. “He’s part of the problem.”

“What problem?” The way he was talking, Nicola was beginning to wonder if her husband really had lost his marbles.

Malcolm turned to face her. “The problem people have fucking understanding what happened to my son-in-law. The problem we had when the PM’s fucking concern when James attacked you in the shop was that I was seen to not let him fucking murder you. When your daughter died and his biggest fucking issue was not that you were clearly not fucking coping, but that I had taken you to work. When you had cancer and he had me so fucking brainwashed that I actually worried what he might make me fucking do about it.”

Nicola was taken aback; she couldn’t find the words to answer him.

“He doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything except himself. He doesn’t even really care about the fucking party, as long as he gets to sit on his throne built from the bones of his predecessors,” Malcolm spat.

“Nor did you at one point.”

“I did,” he argued. “I cared about the party because the party was the government, and the fucking country needs a fucking government.”

“And now?”

“They’re not the government.” He hesitated for a second, and then said, “And now there are things I give more fucks about than the government, anyway.”

That, Nicola knew, was Malcolm’s way of telling her he cared about his family, regardless of the actions that sometimes led her to believe otherwise. He would break another person’s career into a million pieces to repay him for his fucked up priorities, because of the way he had behaved towards Nicola. “No,” Nicola said. “Do you want my opinion?”

Malcolm nodded his head once.

“I think you should resign. I think you should do it because of the leadership of the party, and the prejudices within the party. But don’t do it with venom, Malcolm. Be the good man I know you are,” she implored him. “Just because you _can_ destroy the Prime Minister, that doesn’t mean you should. Do it for yourself, and for me, and Bella, and the kids, and my mum, if you want, but don’t do it just to fuck someone else over. If you’re going to do it, do it the right way.”

He looked into her face. “You’ve been speaking to Victoria, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said with a tiny smile. “Yeah, I went to see her the other day.”

“What did she say?”

“That you’d resign.”

“That fucking woman,” he sighed, shaking his head. “It’s scarier than sleeping in a fucking graveyard, how well she knows us.” He got to his feet and fixed his coat. “Come on, then. Better get this fucking resignation letter written.”

Nicola gave him a warm smile; she took him by the hand and walked with him to Downing Street. She was not stopped, because she was with him, and she had once attended weekly meetings here. It was a strange moment, to realise that her husband, who had worked here longer than Ella had been breathing, was now about to turn his back on it all. It was liberating, but there was a nagging voice in Nicola’s head that asked her if Malcolm would cope with the upheaval.

Of course, this was nothing compared to the upheaval she had been discussing with Victoria and Bella. She chose not to mention it to him now, though.

One ending at a time.


End file.
